A   STUDY  OF 

ENGLISH  PROSE  WRITERS 

A  LABORATORY  METHOD 


BY 

J.    SCOTT    CLARK 

AUTHOR   OF    "A   PRACTICAL   RHETORIC,"    ETC.,    AND   PROFESSOR   OF  THE 
ENGLISH   LANGUAGE  AT  NORTHWESTERN    UNIVERSITY 


"  Le  Style  c'est  l'/iom»ie." — BUFFON 

"  The  whole  art  of  criticism  consists  in  learning  to 
know  the  human  being  who  is  partially  revealed  to  us 
in  his  written  and  spoken  words." — LESLIE  STEPHEN 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
1898 


COPYRIGHT,  1898,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


TROW  DIRECTORY 

PRINTING  AND  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


STACK 
ANNEX 


To 

A   MAN  AND  A    IV  OMAN 
WHO  DENIED   THEMSELVES  A    THOUSAND  LUXURIES 

AND  MANY  COMFORTS 

THAT  THEY  MIGHT  GIVE   THEIR   CHILDREN 
A   LIBERAL  EDUCATION 

THIS   VOLUME 

IS  REVERENTLY  INSCRIBED  BY 
ONE  OF  THE  CHILDREN 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FRANCIS  BACON          .......         i 

JOHN  MILTON    ........       20 

JOHN  BUNYAN    ........       50 

JOSEPH  ADDISON        .....  .82 

RICHARD  STEELE        .         .         .         .         .  117 

DANIEL  DEFOE  .......     143 

JONATHAN  SWIFT        .         .         .         .         .         .         .168 

OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  .         .         .         .         .         .         -199 

SAMUEL  JOHNSON       .......     236 

EDMUND  BURKE         .         .         .         .         .         .   '  282 

CHARLES  LAMB          .......     323 

WALTER  SCOTT  .......     353 

THOMAS  DE  QUINCEV        .         .         .         .         .         .     391 

THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY          ....     420 

WILLIAM   MAKEPEACE  THACKERAY      ....     455 

JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN      ......     492 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD    .         .         .         .         .         .         .507 

THOMAS  CARLYLE      .         .         .         .         .         .         -524 


VI  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 

PAGE 

GEORGE  ELIOT  .  .         .         .         .         .         -570 

CHARLES  DICKENS     .......     607 

JOHN  RUSKIN    ......  .     648 

WASHINGTON  IRVING 693 

NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  .         .         .         .         .         -725 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  ......     768 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL   ......     800 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 837 


PREFACE 

IT  is  generally  admitted  by  teachers  of  English  that,  aftei 
one  has  learned  to  avoid  the  common  violations  of  clearness, 
force,  precision,  and  the  other  requisites  of  good  style,  he  may 
best  improve  his  own  use  of  the  mother-tongue  by  studying 
the  English  classics.  But  how  is  one  to  study  the  English 
classics  so  as  to  obtain  positive  and  appreciable  results?  This 
volume  represents  an  attempt  to  answer  that  question.  It  cer- 
tainly has  not  been  answered  satisfactorily  either  by  the  nu- 
merous text-books  on  English  Literature  or  by  the  countless 
editions  of  English  classics  "with  notes."  To  memorize  bi- 
ographical data  or  the  mere  generalities  and  negations  of  crit- 
icism, or  to  trace  out  obscure  allusions  or  doubtful  meanings, 
is  certainly  not  to  study  a  writer  in  any  broad  or  fruitful  way. 
While  the  method  here  offered  may  not  be  ideal,  it  is  not 
merely  theoretical.  It  has  been  rigidly  and  continuously 
tested  in  the  author's  class-room  during  the  last  eleven  years, 
by  means  of  extracts  from  a  partially  developed  manuscript, 
printed  privately  for  the  use  of  his  pupils.  The  results  thus 
obtained  seem  to  warrant  him  in  presenting  the  method  for 
the  use,  or  at  least  for  the  criticism,  of  his  fellow -teachers. 

In  a  word,  the  method  consists  in  determining  the  partic- 
ular and  distinctive  features  of  a  writer's  style  (using  the  term 
style  in  its  wide  sense),  in  sustaining  that  analysis  by  a  very 
wide  consensus  of  critical  opinion,  in  illustrating  the  particular 
characteristics  of  each  writer  by  voluminous  and  carefully 
selected  extracts  from  his  works,  and  in  then  requiring  the 
pupil  to  find  in  the  works  of  the  writer  parallel  illustrations. 
The  method  has  grown  out  of  dissatisfaction  with  results  ob- 


Vlll  PREFACE 

tained  under  the  old  methods  of  teaching  English  and  out  of 
the  conviction  that  such  a  revolution  as  has  taken  place  in  the 
study  of  all  branches  of  natural  science  during  the  last  quarter 
century  is  both  possible  and  necessary  in  the  study  of  English. 
Just  as  the  pupil  has  come  to  study  oxygen  and  electricity  and 
protoplasm  and  not  merely  what  someone  has  said  about 
these,  so  he  must  learn  to  study  the  masterpieces  of  style  them- 
selves and  not  merely  what  someone  has  said  about  them. 
Moreover,  as  the  student  of  chemistry,  physics,  or  biology, 
must  have  a  hand-book  or  a  set  of  tables  to  show  him  how  to 
go  to  work,  so  the  student  of  English  classics  must  have  a 
hand-book  to  show  him  how  to  go  to  work.  This  volume  is 
offered  as  such  a  hand-book. 

It  is  a  plausible  objection  to  the  method  here  presented  that 
it  is  unscientific  because  it  seems  to  apply  the  old  scholastic 
dictum  :  "  First  learn  what  is  to  be  believed,"  and  follows  a 
deductive  rather  than  an  inductive  order.  The  reply  is  that 
the  pupil  must  have  some  guidance,  and  that  "everyone 
knows  more  than  anyone."  It  is  believed  that  the  consensus 
of  criticism  here  offered  is  sufficiently  wide  to  annul  any 
charge  of  mere  individual  preference.  To  ask  an  ordinary 
undergraduate  to  study  an  English  classic  without  giving  him 
some  specific  working  directions,  is  as  fruitless  as  to  ask  him 
to  fly.  Moreover,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  method  is  really 
inductive  and  scientific  ;  for  the  pupil  is  urged  to  find  in  his 
author  any  other  distinctive  characteristic  for  which  he  can 
discover  clear  illustrations  besides  those  named  in  the  analysis. 
After  a  class  has  had  sufficient  experience  in  following  the 
method  here  presented,  it  may  be  wise  and  feasible  to  ask  them 
to  do  independent  critical  work.  But  born  critics  are  as  rare 
as  born  chemists. 

Among  the  results  obtained  from  the  use  of  the  method  here 
presented  are  an  increase  in  the  breadth,  accuracy,  and  idio- 
matic character  of  the  pupil's  vocabulary  ;  the  development, 
in  the  pupil's  style,  of  such  graces  as  chaste  imagery,  suspense, 


PREFACE  IX 

point,  smoothness,  rhythm,  and  a  greater  predominance  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  element ;  the  development  of  an  intelligent  crit- 
ical habit ;  and  last,  but  perhaps  most  important,  the  creation 
of  a  real  hunger  for  the  best  literature  and  the  initiation  of  the 
pupil  into  the  real  life  and  spirit  of  the  great  masters  of  style. 
The  central  idea  of  the  book  is  found  in  the  quotation  from 
Leslie  Stephen  given  on  the  title-page  :  "  The  whole  art  of 
criticism  consists  in  learning  to  know  the  human  being  who  is 
partially  revealed  to  us  in  his  written  and  spoken  words."  The 
biographical  outline  prefixed  to  the  discussion  of  each  writer 
is  intended  simply  as  a  means  of  review,  that  the  reader  may 
get  the  historical  bearing,  so  to  speak,  before  beginning  his 
critical  work.  Those  who  desire  more  minute  biographies 
will  find  them  in  the  encyclopaedias.  The  biographies  of 
most  of  the  earlier  writers  are  based  on  Leslie  Stephen's  inval- 
uable "Biographical  Dictionary;"  the  later  ones  are  based 
on  a  careful  review  of  the  respective  writer's  published  corre- 
spondence. 

The  bibliographies  also  prefixed  to  the  several  discussions 
are  the  result  of  some  research.  No  subject  needs  the  services 
of  the  professional  bibliographer  more  than  criticism,  yet 
hitherto  it  has  been  strangely  and  almost  entirely  neglected. 
In  the  nature  of  the  case,  the  best  criticism  is  not  to  be  found 
in  complete  volumes  nor  even  in  complete  chapters  or  para- 
graphs. It  is  scattered  sparsely  throughout  a  vast  amount  of 
biography  and  general  comment,  and  is  generally  found  in 
books  whose  titles  give  no  hint  of  critical  contents.  It  is 
hoped  that  the  bibliographies  here  given  will  be  found  both 
helpful  and  somewhat  exhaustive.  Every  book  listed  has  been 
conscientiously  examined,  besides  a  vast  number  of  volumes 
and  periodical  articles  whose  titles  seemed  to  promise  possible 
criticism,  but  which  were  found  to  contain  only  biography  or 
the  generalities  and  negations  of  criticism.  Only  those  books 
and  articles  are  listed  that  contain  positive  and  specific  criti- 
cism. In  general,  the  arrangement  of  books  is  somewhat  in 


X  PREFACE 

the  order  of  their  critical  importance.  In  determining  the  con- 
sensus of  opinion  as  to  the  characteristics  of  any  writer,  the 
attempt  has  been  to  quote  the  most  eminent  critics;  but  the 
author  has  not  hesitated  to  quote  from  comparatively  obscure 
commentators  whenever  the  criticisms  offered  by  such  have 
been  found  clear  and  happy  in  expression.  Both  the  crit- 
ical comments  and  the  illustrations  have  been  taken  directly 
from  the  original  sources. 

While  this  volume  is  not  intended  for  use  without  constant 
reference  to  the  works  of  the  writers  respectively  treated,  and 
while  it  is  intended,  primarily,  as  a  text-book  for  advanced 
pupils  in  English,  it  is  believed  that  it  will  be  found  not  de- 
void of  interest  to  the  general  reader,  even  if  used  without 
reference  to  companion  volumes  of  general  literature. 

In  conclusion,  the  author  desires  to  acknowledge  his  in- 
debtedness to  the  late  Dr.  William  F.  Poole,  of  revered  mem- 
ory, and  to  his  successor,  Mr.  John  Vance  Cheney,  for  cour- 
tesies extended  in  the  Newbury  Library  of  Chicago  ;  to  Mr. 
Ernst  Hild,  Librarian  of  the  Chicago  Public  Library,  and  to 
his  assistant,  Miss  Elliott,  for  similar  courtesies  ;  to  the  Rev. 
E.  W.  Mundy,  Librarian  of  the  Central  Library  of  Syracuse, 
New  York  ;  to  Miss  Mary  B.  Lindsay,  Librarian  of  the  Evan- 
ston,  111.,  Public  Library;  to  Miss  Lodilla  Ambrose,  Assist- 
ant Librarian  of  Northwestern  University  ;  to  the  members  of 
the  English  language  "seminary"  classes  at  Northwestern 
during  the  last  two  years,  who  have  given  material  aid  in  veri- 
fying the  bibliographies,  and  to  his  sister  and  faithful  aman- 
uensis, Mrs.  Alice  Clark  Greene. 

It  can  hardly  be  expected  that  the  following  pages  are  free 
from  errors.  They  have  been  prepared  during  the  rare  mo- 
ments and  hours  snatched  from  years  of  almost  slavish  toil  in 
the  most  exacting  of  professions,  while  subject  to  constant  in- 
terruption and  in  the  midst  of  unpropitious  circumstances.  If, 
in  spite  of  possible  errors,  the  book  shall  serve  in  any  degree 
to  arouse  in  other  pupils  the  interest  and  the  "  noble  hunger  " 


PREFACE  xi 

that  have  been  thus  aroused  in  his  own,  the  author's  end  will 
be  attained.  If  warranted  by  the  reception  given  to  the 
present  volume,  the  author  purposes  to  supplement  it,  in  the 
near  future,  with  two  others ;  one  treating  in  a  similar  manner 
the  style  of  twenty-five  English  and  American  poets  of  the 
first  rank  and  the  other  devoted  primarily  to  Shakespeare  and 
secondarily  to  a  concise  treatment  of  many  poets  and  prose 
writers  of  lower  rank.  Most  of  the  material  for  these  addi- 
tional volumes  is  already  in  hand. 

J.  S.  C. 

NORTHWESTERN   UNIVERSITY, 
Evanston,  111.,  June,  1898. 


SUGGESTIONS  TO  TEACHERS 


WHILE  the  author  does  not  assume  to  teach  the  teachers 
who  may  use  this  volume  as  a  text-book,  it  is  hoped  that  a 
detailed  statement  of  the  method  of  use  found  most  fruitful  in 
his  own  classes  will  not  appear  pedantic.  In  order  to  attain 
the  ends  enumerated  in  the  preface,  it  has  been  his  custom  to 
assign  beforehand  to  each  member  of  a  class  a  specific  section 
of  some  work  of  the  particular  writer  to  be  studied  at  the  time 
and  to  give  the  following  directions  to  pupils : — 

1.  Read  carefully  the  section  assigned  to  you,  and  observe 
critically  every  word,  neither  very  long  nor  obsolete,  that  im- 
presses you  as  not  found  in  the  vocabularies  of  ordinary  writers 
and  speakers,  especially  such  words  as  do  not  belong  to  your 
own  habitual  vocabulary.     Select  the  best  ten  such  words  and 
write  them  after  the  figure  i  in  your  class  report,  which  is  to 
be  left  on  the  instructor's  desk  at  the  opening  of  the  class 
session. 

2.  Observe  carefully  every  case  of  especial  accuracy  or  deli- 
cacy in  the  use  of  words,  and  record  the  best  five  cases  oppo- 
site the  figure  2  in  your  class  report,  giving  enough  of  the 
context  in  every  case  to  make  the  accuracy  or  delicacy  ap- 
parent. 

3.  Observe  every  distinct  idiom,  and  record,  opposite  the 
figure  3,  your  best  five  cases. 

4.  Observe  every  rhetorical  figure,  and  index  opposite  the 
figure  4,  the  page  and  line  where  each  of  the  best  five  figures 
is  to  be  found. 

5.  Index,  opposite  the  figure  5,  the  best  three  cases  of  sus- 
pense (rhetorical  period)  to  be  found  in  your  section. 

6.  Index,  opposite   the   figure  6,  the  best  three   cases  of 
point  (epigram,  antithesis,  balance,  etc.),  if  such  be  found. 

7.  Index,  opposite   the  figure   7,  the  best   three   cases   of 
smooth  connection  found.     Observe   especially  the   connec- 
tion between  paragraphs. 


SUGGESTIONS   TO   TEACHERS  xiii 

8.  Index,  opposite  the  figure  8,  the  best  three  cases  of  sim- 
plicity, if  such  be  found.      Define  simplicity,  for  this  purpose, 
as  the  use  of  easy  conversational  words  and  constructions. 

9.  Index,   opposite  the  figure  9,  the   best  three  cases  of 
rhythm,  if  such  be  found.     Rhythm  is  "an  element  of  pro- 
portion in  language" — it  is  always  an  essential  element  of 
eloquence. 

10.  Now  determine,  approximately,  the  percentage  of  An- 
glo-Saxon words  employed  by  the  given  writer,  in  the  follow- 
ing manner  :  Add  the  whole  number  of  words  on  any  full 
page,  taken  at  random,  and  use  the  sum  for  the  denominator 
of  a  fraction.     Then  add  the  words  on  that  page  that  are  not 
apparently  derived  from  Latin  or  Greek,  and  use  the  sum  as 
the  numerator  of  your  fraction  ;  now  reduce  the  fraction  to 
decimal   terms,  and  the  result  will   be  the  approximate  one 
sought.     Of  course,  the  accuracy  of  the  result  thus  obtained 
will  depend  on  the  pupil's  knowledge  of  foreign   languages, 
but  the  ordinary  college  student  knows  enough  of  Latin,  at 
least,  to  make  the  exercise  practical  and  beneficial. 

Now  read  carefully  the  analysis  of  the  writer  under  consid- 
eration, to  be  found  in  this  volume,  until  you  shall  have 
gained,  from  the  comments  and  illustrations,  a  clear  idea  of 
each  of  his  peculiar  characteristics.  Then  review  the  section 
assigned  you  from  the  writer's  works,  find  there  the  best  illus- 
trations you  can  of  each  of  the  characteristics,  and  index  in 
your  class  report  the  best  illustrations  found  for  each  point, 
numbering  according  to  the  numbers  given  in  the  text-book. 
If  your  section  does  not  afford  illustrations  of  all  the  particu- 
lar characteristics,  obtain  these  from  any  of  the  writer's  other 
works  available,  so  far  as  you  have  time. 

Finally,  copy  at  the  end  of  your  class  report  at  least  one 
hundred  words  consisting  of  the  finest,  brightest  expressions 
and  short  passages  to  be  found  in  what  you  have  read. 

If  an  average  of  forty  i2mo  pages  from  any  writer  be  as- 
signed to  every  pupil,  the  ordinary  college  upper-classman 
will  accomplish  the  work  outlined  above  in  about  five  hours 
of  faithful  work.  The  work  may  be  divided  and  considered 
at  two  or  more  class  sessions,  or  the  complete  reports  may  be 
considered  at  one  time  and  credit  be  given  accordingly. 

The  recitation-hour  is  occupied  in  comparing  the  various 
pupils'  reports,  listening  to  several  illustrations  of  each  of  the 
particular  characteristics,  emphasizing  the  best  cases  under  the 


XIV  SUGGESTIONS   TO   TEACHERS 

ten  general  characteristics,  and  in  answering  many  questions 
incident  to  the  discussion.  The  method  in  general  has  never 
failed  to  stimulate  interest.  Selections  are  made  at  every 
class  session  from  the  words  reported  under  the  first  general 
head  (see  directions  to  pupils  on  pages  xiii  and  xiv),  and  an 
attempt  is  made  to  fix  these  words  in  the  vocabulary  of  every 
member  of  the  class  by  requiring  written  exercises  involving 
the  accurate  use  of  the  selected  words  in  sentences  invented  by 
the  pupils. 

One  difficulty  confronts  the  teacher  who  would  have  his 
pupils  study  the  English  classics  by  this  or  any  other  method"; 
namely,  the  lack  of  proper  material  in  duplicate.  To  use  a 
scientific,  that  is  a  laboratory  method,  one  must  have  mate- 
rial corresponding  in  variety  and  duplication  to  that  provided 
at  each  table  in  a  chemical  laboratory ;  but  few  school-boards 
are  yet  willing  to  give  to  the  English  teacher  equal  facilities 
with  his  chemical  or  biological  colleague.  The  use  of  the  or- 
dinary book  of  "  selections  "  is  a  delusion  and  a  snare.  As 
well  get  an  idea  of  the  Atlantic  from  examining  a  pint  bottle 
of  its  water. 

Three  methods  of  meeting  the  exigency  have  been  em- 
ployed by  the  author  ;  none  fruitless,  but  of  varying  value. 
First,  one  may  have  each  pupil  obtain  a  cheap  edition  of 
some  complete  work  of  every  writer  to  be  studied  during  a 
given  term,  and  may  then  assign  the  same  in  sections,  duplicat- 
ing sections  according  to  circumstances.  The  large  list  of 
very  cheap  editions  of  detached  works  published  within  recent 
years  makes  this  plan  feasible  without  unduly  burdening  the 
pupil  by  the  expense.  Many  years'  use  of  this  method  has 
proved  its  practicability.  The  only  serious  objection  lies  in 
the  fact  that,  often,  no  single  work  of  a  writer  gives  a  suffi- 
ciently broad  view  of  his  style.  For  example,  characteristics 
of  Goldsmith  to  be  found  plentifully  in  his  plays  and  essays 
are  not  found  in  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield."  Of  course,  the 
ideal  and  the  just  way  would  be  for  the  school  to  own  the 
works  required,  in  sufficient  duplicate,  and  then  to  charge,  if 
necessary,  a  small  fee,  as  is  done  in  the  laboratories  of  science, 
for  the  use  and  wear  of  the  books.  The  second  method  is  to 
have  each  pupil  own  the  complete  works  of  some  one  writer 
to  be  studied  and  then  to  rotate  the  same  through  the  class. 
This  method  secures  the  broad  view  lacking  in  the  first,  but  it 
is  cumbrous,  sometimes  irritating,  and  it  makes  concentration 


SUGGESTIONS   TO   TEACHERS  XV 

in  the  class-room  impossible  ;  since  no  two  pupils  may  be 
studying  the  same  writer  at  the  same  time.  The  third  and 
by  far  the  best  method  yet  found  involves  more  preliminary 
work  than  may,  perhaps,  be  expected  of  every  teacher.  A  set 
of  books  large  enough  to  accommodate  his  present  and  prob- 
able classes  has  been  made  by  the  author  by  taking  the  com- 
plete works  of  each  of  the  twenty-six  writers  here  treated,  in 
sufficient  duplications  to  make  an  average  of  about  forty  pages 
for  every  pupil,  separating  these  into  sections,  and  reminding 
them  strongly.  The  result  is  a  series  of  volumes,  each  differ- 
ent from  the  rest,  numbered  consecutively,  and  all  together 
including  the  complete  works  of  every  writer  to  be  studied. 
These  books  are  owned  by  the  teacher  or  by  the  school,  and 
are  leased  to  the  pupil  for  a  small  fee,  sufficient  to  keep  the 
books  in  repair.  Thus  the  class  have,  as  a  whole,  the  widest 
view  of  the  writer's  style,  and  the  objections  to  the  first  two 
methods  are  met.  The  first  method  suggested  is  practicable 
and,  on  the  whole,  very  satisfactory.  The  second  is  hardly 
to  be  recommended  ;  the  third  is  almost  ideal. 


BACON,   1561-1626 

Biographical  Outline. — FRANCIS  BACON,  born  at  York 
House,  London,  January  22,  1561  ;  father  Lord  Keeper  of 
the  Great  Seal ;  mother  a  fine  classical  scholar  and  a  sister  of 
the  wife  of  William  Cecil  (Lord  Treasurer  Burghley).  Bacon 
enters  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  April,  1573  (aged 
twelve),  and  leaves  in  March,  1575;  is  admitted  to  Gray's 
Inn  in  the  same  year ;  becomes  connected  with  the  English 
embassy  to  France  in  1576,  and  remains  abroad  till  the  death 
of  his  father,  in  1579  ;  returns  to  London  soon  afterward,  finds 
his  inheritance  to  be  meagre,  and  seeks  political  preferment 
through  his  uncle,  Burghley  ;  continues  his  legal  studies,  and 
is  admitted  as  "  utter  barrister"  in  1582 ;  in  November,  1584, 
is  elected  member  of  parliament  for  Melcombe-Regis,  through 
Burghley's  influence  ;  in  1584-85  Bacon  writes  his  "  Letter  of 
Advice  to  Queen  Elizabeth,"  urging  moderation  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  Catholics  ;  in  the  parliament  of  1586  sits  for  Taun- 
ton,  and  becomes  a  bencher  of  Gray's  Inn  during  the  same 
year;  in  1589  sits  for  Liverpool,  and  writes  "An  Advertise- 
ment Touching  the  Controversies  of  the  Church  of  England  ' ' 
(not  published  till  1640),  again  advocating  religious  tolera- 
tion ;  forms  a  close  friendship  with  the  Earl  of  Essex  in  1591 
— due  to  the  Earl's  warm  admiration  of  Bacon,  and  to  Bacon's 
desire  to  "employ"  the  Earl;  in  1592  writes  "Certain  Ob- 
servations," etc.,  a  defence  of  the  queen's  government;  sits 
for  Middlesex  in  1593.  and  leads  the  opposition  against  a 
proposal  of  the  Lords  demanding  joint  discussion  of  certain 
proposed  subsidies  to  the  queen,  thus  displeasing  Burghley, 
and  so  angering  Elizabeth  that  she  refuses  to  see  Bacon 
or  to  listen  to  his  application  for  the  attorney-generalship, 


2  BACON 

though  Essex  warmly  espoused  his  cause  ;  Bacon  first  appears 
in  a  legal  case  in  1594,  and  wins  distinction  and  the  approval 
of  Burghley;  seeks  the  solicitor-generalship  in  1595,  but  de- 
clines to  apologize  to  Elizabeth  for  his  parliamentary  freedom 
of  speech,  and  so  is  refused  the  office  ;  in  his  quest  for  both  these 
offices  Bacon  deliberately  sacrifices  his  personal  advancement 
to  his  conscientious  convictions  of  right ;  Essex,  disappointed 
by  Bacon's  failure  to  secure  the  office,  forces  on  him  a  gift 
of  land  in  Twickenham  Park,  which  Bacon  afterward  sold  (or 
£1,800  ;  in  1595  Bacon  expresses,  in  a  letter  to  Essex,  a  wish 
to  retire  from  the  practice  of  law  and  to  devote  himself  to  phi- 
losophy, but  about  that  time  is  engaged  by  the  queen  as  one 
of  her  learned  counsel ;  in  1596  Bacon  advises  Essex  (then  just 
returned  from  his  Spanish  victories)  to  convince  the  queen 
that  he  (Essex)  is  not  a  dangerous  person  by  shunning  further 
military  enterprises  and  by  refusing  to  cultivate  popularity 
with  the  people;  publishes  his  "  Essays"  in  1595  ;  seeks  to 
become  Master  of  the  Rolls  in  1597,  in  order  to  improve  his 
desperate  financial  condition  ;  sits  for  Southampton  in  1597  ; 
attempts,  unsuccessfully,  to  make  a  statesman  of  Essex ;  is  ar- 
rested for  debt  in  September,  1598;  Essex  loses  the  favor  of 
Elizabeth  by  his  failure  in  the  Irish  campaign  ;  Bacon  attempts 
to  mediate  between  Essex  and  the  queen,  and  only  offends 
both ;  at  the  informal  trial  of  Essex,  in  1600,  Bacon  makes  a 
show  of  severi ty  toward  Essex,  hoping  thus  to  secure  the  favor 
of  the  queen  and  so,  eventually,  to  help  Essex  ;  Essex  is  for- 
bidden to  appear  at  court,  and  proceeds  to  concoct  a  wild 
scheme  of  seizing  the  court  and  inaugurating  a  revolution  ;  in 
February,  1601,  the  project  fails,  Essex  is  imprisoned,  and 
Bacon  is  appointed,  with  others,  to  investigate  the  revolt ; 
Bacon  aids  in  securing  the  conviction  of  Essex,  who  is  exe- 
cuted (Bacon's  apologists  attempt  to  justify  his  action  on  the 
ground  of  Essex's  open  treason  and  Bacon's  duty  to  the  state) ; 
during  the  parliaments  of  1601  and  1602  Bacon  advocates 
restrictions  on  monopolies  and  both  political  and  religious 


BACON  3 

toleration  toward  the  Irish ;  is  knighted  by  James  in  1603; 
during  1604  publishes  his  "Apology  Concerning  the  Late 
Earl  of  Essex,"  and  addresses  to  James  a  paper  on  the  Union 
of  Scotland  and  England  and  one  on  "The  Pacification  and 
Edification  of  the  Church  of  England,"  the  latter  again 
urging  religious  toleration  ;  attempts  conciliation  between 
James  and  the  Commons  in  the  parliament  of  1604  ;  is  ap- 
pointed one  of  the  English  commissioners  to  discuss  the  terms 
of  union  with  Scotland,  and  receives,  in  1604,  a  royal  pension 
of  £60  a  year;  in  October,  1605,  publishes  his  "Advance- 
ment of  Learning;  "  in  May,  1606,  marries  Alice  Barnham, 
daughter  of  a  former  sheriff  of  London  and  step-daughter  of  Sir 
John  Packington  ;  in  June,  1606,  Bacon  asks  the  king  for  the 
solicitor-generalship;  is  promised  that  office  in  1607,  when  the 
then  incumbent,  Doderidge,  should  have  been  removed  ;  in  the 
parliament  of  1606  Bacon  champions  the  measures  of  the  plan 
of  union  with  Scotland,  advocating  free  commercial  intercourse 
and  mutual  citizenship  in  either  country  ;  becomes  solicitor- 
general  June  25,  1607,  at  a  salary  of  ;£ i, ooo  (equal  to  ^£4,000 
now)  ;  becomes  a  strong  supporter  of  James,  and  preaches  very 
conservative  doctrine  ;  in  1608  Bacon  sets  down  his  "  Com- 
mentariiis  Solutus"  being  private  memoranda  of  his  great 
projects  in  science  and  politics  and  of  his  plans  for  personal 
advancement — the  most  complete  revelation  of  Bacon's  true 
character  in  existence;  during  1608  writes  also  "In  Felicem 
^^^•^noriam  Elizabeths"  and  "A  Discourse  on  the  Plantation 
of  Ireland,"  the  latter  addressed  to  James;  during  1609  Bacon 
works  on  his  ' '  Instauratio  MagnaJ '  and  addresses  to  friends  his 
"  Cogitata  et  Visa"  and  his  "  De  Sapientia  Veterum  ,• "  in 
1612  publishes  a  new  edition  of  his  "  Essays,"  adding  "  On 
Deformity,"  a  reflection  on  the  character  of  Salisbury,  Bacon's 
long-time  opponent,  then  recently  deceased  ;  seeks  vainly  to 
secure  Salisbury's  place  as  Master  of  the  Wards;  addresses 
frequent  state  papers  to  the  king,  urging  political  and  religious 
toleration  and  proposing  measures  that  would,  doubtless,  have 


4  BACON 

avoided  the  Revolution  ;  Bacon  becomes  attorney-general  in 
1613,  and  is  so  respected  by  the  Commons  that  they  waive 
their  rule  forbidding  an  attorney-general  to  sit  in  the  house  ; 
Bacon  sides  with  James  in  his  quarrel  with  Coke  over  the  pre- 
rogative of  the  judges,  appears  as  the  chief  prosecutor  of  Somer- 
set, and  warmly  supports  Villiers  (Buckingham)  ;  becomes  a 
privy  councillor  in  1616  and  Lord  Keeper  of  the  Seals  in  1617  ; 
writes  his  "  New  Atlantis  "  (never  completed)  between  1614 
and  1617  ;  imperils  his  position,  in  1617,  by  protesting  to 
James  against  the  marriage  of  Coke's  daughter  to  Buckingham; 
becomes  Lord  Chancellor  January  17,  1618,  and  is  raised  to 
the  peerage  July  12,  1618 ;  exhibits  great  energy  and  judicial 
fairness  in  his  office  of  Chancellor  ;  in  1618,  1619,  and  1620 
Bacon  engages  in  the  prosecution  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Suf- 
folk, and  Yelverton ;  proposes,  in  the  parliament  of  1620,  the 
withdrawal  of  certain  obnoxious  patents  ;  publishes  his  "  No- 
vum  Organum"  October  12,  1620  ;  on  his  sixtieth  birth-day, 
January  22,  1621,  receives  the  homage  of  Ben  Jonson,  and 
is  made  Viscount  St.  Albans  six  days  later  ;  is  attacked  by 
Coke,  Cranfield,  and  others  in  the  parliament  of  1621  for  his 
support  of  unpopular  monarchical  measures,  and  is  made  a 
scape-goat  for  James,  Buckingham,  and  their  supporters;  is 
charged  in  the  Commons  by  one  Aubrey  and  again  by  one 
Egerton  with  accepting  bribes  while  Chancellor,  his  accusers 
being  men  against  whom  Bacon  had  decided  ;  the  complaint 
is  brought  before  the  Lords,  supplemented  with  charges  made 
by  Lady  Wharton,  who  had  paid  money  directly  into  Bacon's 
hands,  and  had  received  a  crushing  sentence  soon  afterward 
(Bacon's  apologists  explain  his  conduct  on  the  ground  that, 
according  to  the  custom  of  the  day,  presents  might  be  received 
from  suitors  ;  but  they  admit  that,  by  taking  a  gift  while  Lady 
Wharton's  case  was  pending,  Bacon  was  indiscreet  if  not  crim- 
inally guilty)  ;  Bacon  pleads  guilty,  and  begs  that  his  pun- 
ishment may  be  limited  to  the  loss  of  his  office  ;  he  is  fined 
^40,000,  is  ordered  imprisoned  during  the  king's  pleasure, 


BACON  5 

is  disabled  from  sitting  in  parliament,  and  is  forbidden  to 
come  near  the  court ;  after  t\vo  weeks  in  the  Tower,  Bacon  is 
released,  his  fine  is  so  adjusted  as  to  relieve  him  from  financial 
embarrassment,  and,  eventually,  he  is  allowed  to  come  to  court; 
completes  his  "  History  of  Henry  VII."  in  October,  1621  ; 
in  1623  publishes  the  Latin  translation  of  his  "  Advancement 
of  Learning  "  under  the  title  "  De  Augmentis  Scientiarum  /" 
applies  in  vain  for  the  provostship  of  Eton  in  1623  and  for  a 
full  pardon  in  1625  ;  continues  to  work  on  his  "  Instauratio 
Magna,"  though  seriously  interrupted  by  ill-health;  dies 
April  9,  1626,  at  the  home  of  Lord  Arundel,  his  illness  being 
occasioned  by  exposure  while  performing  a  scientific  experi- 
ment. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON    BACON'S   STYLE. 

Minto,  \V.,  "English  Prose  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1886,  Macmillan, 

244-255- 
Hazlitt,  W.,  "  Dramatic  Literature  of  the  Reign  of  Elizabeth. "     London, 

1882,  Bell,  174-181. 
Church,  R.  W.,  "  English  Men  of  Letters"  (Bacon).     New  York,  1884, 

Harper,  198-214. 
Macaulay,  T.    B.,  "Essays"  (Miscellaneous  Works).     New  York,  1880, 

Harper,  2  :   330-458. 
Hazlitt,  \V.,  ••  Miscellaneous  Works."     Philadelphia,  1869,  Claxton,  R. 

&  H.,  174-181. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  89-94.    . 
Taine,  H.,  "History  of  English  Literature."    New  York,  1875,  Holt,  I: 

244-252. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth."     Boston,  1884, 

Houghton,  Mifflin,  &  Co.,  I:   278-340. 

Collier,  W.  F. ,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     London,    1892,   Nel- 
son, 155-161. 
Lord,  J.,  "Beacon  Lights  of  History."     London,  Blackwoods,  1886,  3: 

417-458. 
Whipple,    E.   P.,    "Outlooks."     Boston,    1888,    Ticknor  &  Co.,    300- 

305- 


6  BACON 

Saintsbury,  G.,  "History  of  Elizabethan  Literature."     New  York,  1887, 

Macmillan,  207-214. 
Disraeli,  I.,  "Amenities  of  Literature."     New  York,  1874,  W.  J.  Wid- 

dleton,  2 :   322-324. 

Fuller,  Thomas,  "Worthies."     Boston,  1869,  Fields,  2:   422. 
Morris,  G.  S.,  "British  Thought."     Chicago,  1880,  S.  C.  Griggs  &  Co., 

114-140. 
Stoughton,  J.,  "Worthies  of  Science."     London,  n.  d.,  Religious  Tract 

Society,  45-66. 
Washburn,  E.  W.,  'Studies  in  Early  English  Literature."     New  York, 

1882,  Putnams,  188-219. 

Wotton,  M.  E.,  "  Word  Portraits."    London,  1887,  Bentley  &  Son,  10-12. 
Spedding,  J.,  "Francis  Bacon  and  His  Times."     Boston,  1878,  Hough- 
ton,  Osgood  &  Co.,  v.  index. 

Fischer,  E.  K.  B.,  "  Bacon."  London,  1857,  Longmans,  1-37. 
Dixon,  W.  H.,  "  Life  of  Bacon."  London,  1862,  John  Murray. 
Lucas,  S.,  "  Mornings  of  the  Recess."  London,  1864,  Tinsley  Bros.,  i: 

179-223. 
Abbott,  E.  A.,  "Life  and  Works  of  Bacon."    London,  1885,  Macmillan, 

447-457- 
Lovejoy,  B.  G.,  "  Francis  Bacon."     Boston,    1883,  Estes  &  Lauriat,  v. 

index. 

Dixon,  W.  H.,  "Life  of  Bacon."  London,  1862,  John  Murray. 
Adams,  W.  H.  D.,  "  Records  of  Noble  Lives."  London,  1872,  Nelson, 

53-100. 
Knight,  C.,  "Gallery  of  Portraits."     London,  1837,  C.  Knight  &  Co.,  7: 

177-184. 

Hunt,  T.  W.,  "  Representative  English  Prose."    New  York,  1887,  Arm- 
strong, 217-230. 
Hallam,  H.,  "Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe."     New  York, 

1886,  Armstrong,  217-230. 
Philips,   M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893, 

Harper,  253-285. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "  Development  of  English  Literature."      Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  I  :   456-472- 
Stephen,  L.,    "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography."     New  York,   1885, 

Macmillan,  2:  328-361. 
Mitford,  Miss  M.  R.,  "  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."     New  York, 

1852,  Harper,  547-548. 

Lodge,  E.,  "Portraits."     London,  1850,  Bohn,  3:   187-194. 
Devey,  J.,  "Bacon's  Essays,  with  Introduction."     London,  1890,  Bell, 

xxviii-xxiz. 


BACON  7 

Nichol,  John,  "  Francis  Bacon,  His  Life  and  Philosophy."  Edinburgh, 
1889,  Blackwood,  1-249. 

Craik,  G.  L.,  "Bacon,  His  Writings  and  Philosophy."  London, 
1844. 

North  American  Review,  61  :  351-374  (Brazer)  ;  68:  402  (A.  P.  Pea- 
body);  65:  I77(W.  B.  Peabody);  74:  84  (W.  S.  Low);  93:  149 
(H.  Giles);  29:  76  (A.  H.  Everett);  41:  386  (Everett). 

Edinburgh  Revieiv,  113:  159-177;  27:  180;  36:  220-267  (Mackin- 
tosh); 150:395;  106:  151;  168. 

Contemporary  Revie-ii>,  27:  653-821  (J.  Spedding);  28:  141  (E.  A.  Ab- 
bott) ;  28  :  169-190  and  365-562  (J.  Spedding). 

Atlantic  Monthly,    51  :  507  (R.   G.  White);    43:  542-543;    22:  476- 

573- 

Quarterly  Review,  99:   287-331  ;  6l  :  462. 
Blackwood' s  Magazine,  93  :   480-499  ;   3  :   657. 
Eclectic  Review,  IOO  :  672-689  (J.  Devey). 
Bentley's  Miscellany,  26  :   84-95  (Cheirurgus). 
New  Englander,  10  :   333-374  (D.  A.  Wasson). 
The  Dial  (Chicago),  6  :   118-120  (M.  B.  Anderson). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Extreme  Conciseness. — It  is  doubtful  whether  any 
other  English  writer  has  equalled  Bacon  in  the  power  of  con- 
densation. In  the  words  of  Alexander  Smith,  "His  sen- 
tences bend  beneath  the  weight  of  his  thought  like  a  branch 
beneath  the  weight  of  its  fruit."  Saintsbury  attributes  Ba- 
con's "curt  severity"  to  the  influence  of  Montaigne.  We 
have  received  from  Bacon  a  large  number  of  sententious 
phrases  and  apothegms,  which  have  become  common  property. 
"  His  sayings,"  says  Hazlitt,  "  have  the  effect  of  axioms,  and 
are  at  once  striking  and  self-evident."  He  has  been  called 
"stimulating  beyond  the  recorded  power  of  any  other  man 
except  Socrates." 

"  The  severe  terseness  of  the  style  of  the  '  Essays,'  in  which 
every  sentence  is  packed  with  as  much  matter  as  it  can  pos- 
sibly hold,  makes  their  intelligent  perusal  at  first  a  task  of 


8  BACON 

some  difficulty ;  but  fresh  perusals  reveal  their  inexhaustible 
wealth  of  matter.  "—Jf.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  His  works  combine  the  greatest  brevity  with  the  greatest 
beauty  of  expression ;  .  .  .  each  thought  is  so  truly  an 
addition  and  not  an  expansion  of  the  preceding." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

' '  These  short  papers  say  what  they  have  to  say  without 
preface  and  in  literary  undress,  without  a  superfluous  word, 
without  the  joints  and  bands  of  structure ;  they  say  it  in  brief, 
rapid  sentences,  which  come  down,  sentence  after  sentence, 
like  the  strokes  of  a  great  hammer.  No  wonder  that,  in  their 
disdainful  brevity,  they  seem  rugged  and  abrupt.  .  .  . 
He  had  more  than  once  expressed  his  preference  for  the  form 
of  aphorism  over  the  argumentative  and  didactive  continuity 
of  a  set  discourse.  .  .  .  These  aphorisms  are  meant  to 
strike,  to  awaken  questions,  to  disturb  prejudices,  to  let  light 
into  a  nest  of  unsuspected  intellectual  confusions  and  self- 
misunderstandings,  to  be  the  mottoes  and  watchwords  of 
many  a  laborious  and  difficult  inquiry." — R.  W.  Church. 

"  Instead  of  explaining  his  idea,  he  transposes  and  trans- 
lates it,  translates  it  entire,  to  the  smallest  details,  enclosing 
all  in  the  majesty  of  a  grand  period  or  in  the  brevity  of  a 
striking  sentence.  Thence  springs  a  style  of  admirable  rich- 
ness, gravity,  and  vigor  ;  now  solemn  and  symmetrical,  now 
concise  and  piercing,  always  elaborate  and  full  of  color. 
There  is  nothing  in  English  prose  superior  to  his  diction. 
.  .  .  Shakespeare  and  the  seers  do  not  contain  more  vig- 
orous or  expressive  condensations  of  thought,  more  resembling 
inspiration,  and  in  Bacon  they  are  to  be  found  everywhere. 
On  the  whole,  his  process  is  that  of  the  creators ;  it  is  intu- 
ition, not  reasoning.  When  he  has  laid  up  his  store  of  facts, 
the  greatest  possible,  on  some  vast  subject,  on  some  entire 
province  of  the  mind,  on  the  whole  anterior  philosophy,  on 
the  general  condition  of  the  sciences,  on  the  power  and 
limits  of  human  reason,  he  casts  over  all  this  a  comprehensive 


BACON  9 

view,  as  it  were  a  great  net,  brings  up  a  universal  idea,  con- 
denses his  idea  into  a  maxim,  and  hands  it  to  us  with  the 
words,  '  Verify  and  profit  by  it.'  '  —Taine. 

"His  phrases  have  the  effect  of  axioms,  and  are  at  once 
striking  and  self-evident.  .  .  .  His  style  is  equally  sharp  and 
sweet,  flowing  and  pithy,  condensed  and  expansive,  express- 
ing volumes  in  a  sentence  or  amplifying  a  single  thought 
into  pages  of  rich,  glowing,  and  delightful  eloquence." — 
Hazlitt. 

"  He  had  a  wonderful  talent  for  packing  thought  close  and 
rendering  it  portable." — Macaulay. 

"  Of  all  the  productions  in  the  English  language,  Bacon's 
Essays  contain  the  most  matter  in  the  fewest  words." — 
\VJiatdy. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Certainly  it  is  heaven  upon  earth  to  have  a  man's  mind  move 
in  charity,  rest  in  providence,  and  turn  upon  the  poles  of  truth." 

—  Of  Truth. 

"  Revenge  triumphs  over  death  ;  love  slights  it ;  honor  aspireth 
to  it ;  grief  flieth  to  it  ;  fear  preoccupateth  it." — Of  Death. 

"  Children  sweeten  labors,  but  they  make  misfortunes  more 
bitter  ;  they  increase  the  cares  of  life,  but  they  mitigate  the  re- 
membrance of  death." — Of  Parents  and  Children. 

"  Nuptial  love  maketh  mankind,  friendly  love  perfecteth  it, 
but  wanton  love  corrupteth  and  embaseth  it." — Of  Love. 

"  Men  of  age  object  too  much,  consult  too  long,  adventure  too 
little,  repent  too  soon,  and  seldom  drive  business  home  to  the  full 
period,  but  content  themselves  with  a  mediocrity  of  success." 

—  Of  Youth  and  Age. 

"  Men  in  great  place  are  thrice  servants— servants  of  the  sov- 
ereign of  state,  servants  of  fame,  and  servants  of  business  ;  so  as 
they  have  no  freedom,  neither  in  their  persons,  nor  in  their  ac- 
tions, nor  in  their  times.  It  is  a  strange  desire  to  seek  power  and 
lose  liberty  ;  or  to  seek  power  over  others  and  to  lose  power  over 
a  man's  self."— Of  Great  Place. 


IO  BACON 

2.  Clear  Analysis  and  Arrangement.  —  Bacon  is 
careful  to  define  the  terms  of  his  subject  and  to  make  a  clear 
and  logical  arrangement  of  his  theme.  In  comparing  him 
with  Jeremy  Taylor,  Saintsbury  speaks  of  Bacon's  superior 
sense  of  order  and  proportion.  Hazlitt  calls  him  "the  sur- 
veyor, not  the  builder  of  the  fabric  of  science." 

"As  a  rule,  Bacon's  paragraphs  are  very  good  ;  he  has  a 
sense  of  method  and  good  arrangement.  .  .  .  In  perspi- 
cuity of  arrangement  he  is  much  superior  to  any  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan writers.  .  .  .  The  divisions  are  so  clear  and 
proceed  upon  distinctions  so  familiar  that,  though  the  sub- 
divisions be  carried  to  the  eighth  degree,  there  is  not  the 
least  perplexity  to  any  mind  of  ordinary  education." — Will- 
iam Minto. 

"  The  writings  of  Bacon  are  as  clear  as  they  are  profound." 
—  Whately. 

"It  is  in  the  Essays  alone  that  the  mind  of  Bacon  is 
brought  into  contact  with  the  mind  of  ordinary  readers. 
There  he  talks  to  plain  men,  in  language  that  everybody 
understands,  about  things  in  which  everybody  is  interested." 
— Macaulay. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  take  goodness  in  this  sense,  the  affecting  of  the  weal  of 
men,  which  is  what  the  Grecians  call  '  philanthropia  '/    and  the 
word  humanity  (as  it  is  used)  is  a  little  too  light  to  express  it."- 
Of  Goodness. 

"  We  will  speak  of  nobility  first  as  a  portion  of  an  estate, 
then  as  a  condition  of  particular  persons." — Of  Nobility. 

"  But  leaving  these  curiosities  (though  not  unworthy  to  be 
thought  on  in  fit  place),  we  will  handle  what  persons  are  apt  to 
envy  others,  what  persons  are  most  subject  to  be  envied  them- 
selves, and  what  is  the  difference  between  public  and  private 
envy.  .  .  .  This  envy,  being  in  the  Latin  word  '  invidia? 
goeth  in  the  modern  languages  by  the  name  of  discontentment  ; 
of  which  we  shall  speak  in  handling  sedition." — Of  Envy. 

"  So  that  in  reason  as  well  as  in  experience  there  fall  out  to  be 


BACON  II 

three  distempers  (as  I  may  term  them)  of  learning  :  the  first 
fantastical  learning  ;  the  second  contentious  learning  ;  and  the 
last  delicate  learning  ;  vain  imaginations,  vain  altercations,  and 
vain  affectations  ;  and  with  the  last  I  will  begin." — The  Advance- 
ment of  Learning. 

3.  Rich  Imagery  —  Striking  Illustration. — Bacon 
is  remarkable  not  only  for  the  aptness  and  the  breadth  of  his 
illustrations  but  for  the  wonderful  variety  in  the  sources 
whence  he  draws  them.  All  forms  of  human  activity,  all  vo- 
cations and  professions,  all  departments  of  knowledge  are 
drawn  upon  in  what  Minto  calls  Bacon's  "  incontinent  quick- 
ness to  discover  analogy."  Isaac  Disraeli  calls  him  "not 
only  the  wittiest  of  writers  in  his  remote  allusions,  but  poet- 
ical in  his  fanciful  conceptions."  He  has  an  especial  fond- 
ness for  homely  similitudes  and  quaint  analogies. 

"  Through  all  his  writings  are  numerous  homely  and  pointed 
illustrations  make  his  meaning  abundantly  luminous. 
Bacon's    pages    are   very    thickly   strewn    with    similitudes. 

.  .  They  are  taken  almost  exclusively  from  familiar  ob- 
jects and  operations  in  nature  and  human  life.  In  his  narra- 
tive their  number  is  more  within  bounds,  and  they  are  usually 
very  graphic  ;  in  the  '  Essays  '  they  are  often  superfluous." — 
William  Minto. 

"  The  '  Advancement  of  Learning  '  is  one  of  the  landmarks 
of  what  high  thought  and  rich  imagination  have  made  of  the 
English  language ;  it  is  a  book  which  we  can  never  open 
without  coming  on  some  felicitous  and  unthought  of  illustra- 
tion, yet  so  natural  as  almost  to  be  doomed  to  become  a  com- 
monplace. ...  An  edition  of  Bacon  with  marginal 
references  and  parallel  passages  would  show  a  more  persistent 
recurrence  of  characteristic  illustrations  and  sentences  than 
perhaps  any  other  writer." — R.  W.  Church. 

"  His  conscience  was  weakened  by  that  which  gives  such 
splendor  and  attractiveness  to  his  writings — his  imagination. 
He  was  a  philosopher,  but  a  philosopher  in  whose  character 


12  BACON 

imagination  was  co-ordinated  with  reason.  This  imagination 
was  not  merely  a  quality  of  his  intellect  but  an  element  of  his 
nature,  and  through  its  instinctive  workings  he  was  not  con- 
tent to  send  out  his  thoughts  stoically  bare  of  adornment,  but 
clothed  them  in  purple  and  gold,  and  made  them  move  in 
majestic  cadences.  .  .  .  His  beneficent  spirit  and  rich 
imagination  lend  sweetness  and  beauty  to  the  homeliest  prac- 
tical wisdom." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  The  '  Essays,'  or  '  Counsels  Civil  and  Moral,'  were  espe- 
cially enriched  with  the  brighter  blossoms  of  their  great 
author's  matured  fancy.  In  this  respect — that  his  fancy  was 
more  vivid  in  age  than  in  youth — the  mind  of  Bacon  formed 
an  exception  to  the  common  rule." — W.  F.  Collier. 

"  A  great  and  luminous  intellect,  one  of  the  finest  of  this 
poetic  progeny,  who,  like  his  predecessors,  was  naturally  dis- 
posed to  clothe  his  ideas  in  the  most  splendid  dress  :  in  this 
age  a  thought  did  not  seem  complete  till  it  had  assumed  form 
and  color.  But  what  distinguishes  him  from  the  others  is, 
that  with  him  an  image  only  serves  to  concentrate  meditation. 
He  reflected  long,  stamped  on  his  mind  all  the  parts  and  rela- 
tions of  his  subject ;  he  is  master  of  it,  and  then,  instead  of 
exposing  this  complete  idea  in  a  graduated  chain  of  reasoning, 
he  embodies  it  in  a  comparison  so  expressive,  exact,  lucid,  that 
behind  the  figure  we  perceive  all  the  details  of  the  idea,  like 
liquor  in  a  fine  crystal  vase.  .  .  .  This  is  his  mode  of 
thought,  by  symbols,  not  by  analysis." — Taine. 

"  His  style  is  all  over  color  and  imagery  ;  so  much  so,  in- 
deed, that  this  sort  of  enrichment  may  be  said  frequently  to 
enter  into  its  substance  and  to  constitute  his  thoughts  rather 
than  to  clothe  and  decorate  them." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  This  philosophy  is  constantly  enveloped  in  the  most  splen- 
did imagery,  which  hangs  around  it  like  the  drapery  round 
the  limbs  of  an  ancient  statue,  only  giving  higher  ideas  of  the 
strength  and  symmetry  of  the  form,  which  it  partially  con- 
ceals. ' '  — Hallam . 


BACON  13 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  if  there  were  sought  in  knowledge  a  couch  whereupon  to 
rest  a  searching  and  restless  spirit  ;  or  a  terrace  for  a  wandering 
and  variable  mind  to  walk  up  and  down  with  a  fair  prospect  ;  or 
a  tower  of  state  for  a  proud  mind  to  rest  itself  upon  ;  or  a  fort  or 
a  commanding  ground  for  strife  and  contention  ;  or  a  shop  for 
profit  and  sale  ;  and  not  a  rich  storehouse  for  the  glory  of  the 
Creator  and  the  relief  of  man's  estate." — The  Advancement  of 
Learning. 

"  For  envy  is  a  gadding  passion  and  walketh  the  street  and 
does  not  keep  at  home." — Of  Envy. 

"  All  rising  to  great  place  is -by  a  winding  stair  ;  and  if  there 
be  factions,  it  is  good  to  side  a  man's  self  [to  take  sides]  whilst 
he  is  in  the  rising  and  to  balance  himself  when  he  is  placed." — 
Of  Great  Place. 

"  If  a  man  be  gracious  and  courteous  to  strangers,  it  shows  he 
is  a  citizen  of  the  world,  and  that  his  heart  is  no  island  cut  off 
from  other  lands  but  a  continent  that  joins  to  them." —  Of  Good- 
ness. 

"  For  as  water  will  not  ascend  higher  than  the  level  of  the  first 
spring-head  from  whence  it  descendeth,  so  knowledge  derived 
from  Aristotle,  and  exempted  from  the  liberty  of  examination, 
will  not  rise  again  higher  than  the  knowledge  of  Aristotle." — The 
Advancement  of  Learning. 

4.  Knowledge  of  Human   Nature  —  Sagacity.  — 

Bacon's  great  natural  powers  of  observation  seem  to  have  been 
sharpened  by  his  intimate  relations  with  the  courtiers  of 
Elizabeth  and  James.  He  analyzes  human  character  as  a 
chemist  does  a  natural  compound. 

"His  'Essays'  are  the  counsels  of  a  shrewd,  politic  man 
of  the  world,  who  has  looked  with  eager  and  penetrating  eye 
upon  mankind  as  it  appears  in  the  senate-house,  in  courts  of 
law,  in  the  commercial  world  ;  of  a  man  who  is  firmly  con- 
vinced that  self-interest  is  the  actuating  principle  of  human- 
ity."—j/. 


14  BACON 

"It  was  not  in  the  knowledge  of  nature  but  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature  that  Bacon  pre-eminently  excelled. 
.  His  knowledge  of  human  nature  was  the  result  of 
the  tranquil  deposit,  year  after  year,  into  his  receptive  and 
capacious  intellect  of  the  facts  of  history  and  of  his  own  wide 
experience  of  various  kinds  of  life.  .  .  .  The  most  val- 
uable peculiarity  of  this  wisdom  is  that  it  not  merely  points 
out  what  should  be  done  but  it  points  out  how  it  can  be 
done.  .  .  .  He  regarded  the  machinery  in  motion  ;  the 
human  being  as  he  thinks,  feels,  and  lives  ;  men  in  their  re- 
lations with  men ;  and  the  phenomena  presented  in  history 
and  life  he  aimed  to  investigate  as  he  would  investigate  the 
phenomena  of  the  natural  world." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  He  had  made  an  exact  and  extensive  survey  of  human 
requirements  ;  he  took  the  gauge  and  metre,  the  depths  and 
soundings  of  human  capacity.  He  was  master  of  the  com- 
parative anatomy  of  the  mind  of  man,  of  the  balance  of  power 
among  the  different  faculties.  .  .  .  Bacon  has  been 
called  one  of  the  wisest  of  mankind.  The  word  wisdom 
characterizes  him  more  than  any  other.  .  .  .  He  had 
great  sagacity  of  observation,  solidity  of  judgment,  and  scope 
of  fancy."—  Hazlitt. 

"His  sagacity  and  knowledge  of  state  affairs  proved  so 
true  a  guide  that  his  views  of  the  main  actions  have  not  been 
set  aside  by  more  patient  investigations." — William  Minto. 

"  There  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  human  composition  a 
passage  more  eminently  distinguished  by  profound  and  serene 
wisdom  than  the  description  of  '  The  House  of  Solomon  '  in 
the  '  New  Atlantis.'  " — Macaulay. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  This  kind  of  degenerate  learning  did  chiefly  reign  amongst 
the  schoolmen,  who,  having  sharp  and  strong  wits  and  abundance 
of  leisure  and  small  variety  of  reading  ;  but  their  wits  being  shut 


BACON  15 

up  in  the  cells  of  a  few  authors  (chiefly  Aristotle,  their  dictator) 
as  their  persons  were  shut  up  in  the  cells  of  their  monasteries 
and  colleges,  and  knowing  little  history,  either  of  nature  or  time, 
did  out  of  no  great  quantity  of  matter  and  infinite  agitation  of 
wit  spin  out  unto  us  those  laborious  webs  of  learning  which  are 
extant  in  their  books." — The  Advancement  of  Learning. 

"  It  was  prettily  devised  of  yEsop,  the  fly  sat  upon  the  axle- 
tree  of  the  chariot  and  said,  '  What  a  dust  do  I  raise  !  '  So  are 
there  some  vain  persons  that,  whatever  goeth  alone,  or  moveth 
upon  greater  means,  if  they  have  never  so  little  hand  in  it,  they 
think  it  is  they  that  carry  it.  They  that  are  glorious  [boastful] 
must  needs  be  factious  ;  for  all  bravery  [vaunting]  stands  upon 
comparisons.  They  must  needs  be  violent  to  make  good  their 
own  vaunts  ;  neither  can  they  be  secret  and  therefore  not  effect- 
ual.''—^ Vain  Glory. 

"  A  man  that  hath  no  virtue  in  himself  ever  envieth  virtue  in 
others.  For  men's  minds  will  either  feed  upon  their  own  good 
or  upon  others'  evil,  and  who  wanteth  the  one  will  prey  upon  the 
other,  and  whoso  is  out  of  hope  to  attain  to  another's  virtue,  will 
seek  to  come  at  even  hand  by  depressing  another's  fortune.  A 
man  that  is  busy  and  inquisitive  is  commonly  envious  ;  for  to 
know  much  of  other  men's  matters  cannot  be,  because  all  that 
ado  may  concern  his  own  estate.  Therefore  it  must  needs  be 
that  he  taketh  a  kind  of  play  pleasure  in  looking  upon  the  fort- 
unes of  others.  Neither  can  he  that  mindeth  but  his  own  busi- 
ness find  much  matter  for  envy."  —  On  Envy. 

5.  Frequent  Biblical  and  Classical  Quotation 
and  Allusion. — Bacon's  knowledge  of  the  ancient  classics 
seems  to  have  been  limited  only  by  the  writings  themselves. 
On  almost  every  page  some  brilliant  side-light  is  thrown  from 
this  source,  and  often  from  a  writer  who  is  quite  unknown  to 
the  best  of  our  modern  classical  scholars.  The  moral  ob- 
liquity of  Bacon's  later  life  certainly  was  not  due  to  a  lack  of 
familiarity  with  Bible  truths  and  teachings.  His  acquaintance 
with  Holy  Writ  is  almost  equal  to  that  of  Shakespeare,  and  the 
works  of  both  unite  with  many  modern  masterpieces  in  testify- 
ing to  the  value  of  the  English  Bible  as  a  literary  model. 


16  BACON 

Bacon  quotes  very  frequently  from  the  Bible,  and  from  the 
Latin  writers,  especially  Tacitus,  Lucretius,  and  Cicero. 

"In  his  'Advancement  of  Learning,'  addressed  to  King 
James,  he  seems  to  humor  the  pedantry  of  the  monarch,  and 
introduces  not  a  few  Latin  quotations  without  translating 
them. ' '  —  William  Minto. 

"That  he  felt  any  pride  in,  or  even  set  just  value  on,  his 
unique  mastery  of  the  English  language,  there  is  scarcely  any 
indication.  Of  his  Latin  he  was  proud." — E.  A,  Abbott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"The  blessing  of  Judah  and  Issachar  will  never  meet;  that 
the  same  people  or  nation  should  be  both  the  lion's  whelp  and 
the  ass  between  burdens  ;  neither  will  it  be  that  a  people  over- 
laid with  taxes  should  ever  become  valiant  and  martial." — Of 
Kingdoms  and  Estates. 

"  And  it  cometh  many  times  to  pass  that  '  materiam  super- 
abit  opus,"1  that  the  work  and  coinage  is  worth  more  than  the  ma- 
terial, and  enricheth  a  state  more." — Of  Kingdoms  and  Estates. 

"  This  same  '  multis  utile  bellum  '  is  an  assured  and  infallible 
sign  of  a  state  disposed  to  seditions  and  troubles." — Of  Seditions 
and  Troubles. 

"  And  therefore  it  was  well  said,  '  Invidia  festos  dies  non  agit? 
for  it  is  ever  working  upon  some  or  other." — Of  Envy. 

"  Usury  is  one  of  the  certainest  means  of  gain,  though  one  of 
the  worst ;  as  that  whereby  a  man  doth  eat  his  bread  in  the  sweat 
of  another's  brow." — Of  Riches. 

"  By  all  means  it  is  to  be  procured  that  the  trunk  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar's tree  of  monarchy  be  great  enough  to  bear  the  branches 
and  the  boughs  ;  that  is,  that  the  natural  subjects  of  the  crown  or 
state  bear  a  sufficient  proportion  to  the  stronger  subjects  that 
they  govern  ;  therefore  all  states  that  are  liberal  of  naturalization 
toward  strangers  are  fit  for  empire." — Of  Kingdoms  and  Estates. 

6.  The  Use  of  Obscure  Latin  Derivatives  and 
Obsolete  Words. — "  Bacon  uses  a  great  many  more  obso- 
lete words  than  either  Hooker  or  Sidney.  ...  In  his 


BACON  17 

narrative  and  in  his  '  Essays,'  as  well  as  his  scientific  writings, 
he  shows  a  decided  preference  now  and  then  for  '  ink-horn 
terms.'  " — William  Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Preserve  the  right  of  thy  place,  but  stir  not  questions  of  juris- 
diction."— Of  Great  Place. 

"  As  for  facility  [ease  of  access]  it  is  worse  than  bribery." — Of 
Great  Place. 

"  The  lighter  sort  of  malignity  turneth  but  to  a  coarseness  or 
forwardness  or  aptness  to  oppose,  or  difficileness,  or  the  like  ; 
but  the  deeper  sort  to  envy  and  mere  mischief." — Of  Goodness. 

"  We  see  the  Switzers  last  well  notwithstanding  their  diversity 
of  religion  and  cantons  ;  for  utility  is  their  bond  and  not  respects 
[consideration  of  persons]." — Of  Nobility. 

7.  Eloquence. — "Bacon  was  an  orator,  not  a  worker; 
a  Tyrtaeus,  not  a  Miltiades." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  His  power  as  an  orator  is  attested  by  two  eminent  author- 
ities. Sir  Walter  Raleigh  says  that 'he  surpassed  other  men  in 
speaking  as  much  as  he  did  in  writing  ;  and  Ben  Jonson 
affirms :  '  No  man  had  their  affections  more  in  his  power. ' 
.  .  .  From  all  that  we  know  it  seems  unmistakable  that 
he  addressed  chiefly  the  self-interest  and  confirmed  passions  of 
his  audience.  The  main  study  of  his  life  was  how  to  '  work  ' 
men."  —  William  Minto.  - 

"  He  is  the  most  eloquent  of  all  discoursers  on  the  phi- 
losophy of  science,  and  the  general  greatness  of  his  mind  is 
evident  even  in  the  demonstrable  errors  of  his  system." — 
E.  P.  IVJiipple. 

"His  eloquence  alone  would  have  entitled  him  to  a  high 
rank  in  literature." — Macaulay. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  for  nobility  in  particular  persons,  it  is  a  reverend  thing  to 
see  an  ancient  castle  or  building  not  in  decay,  or  to  see  a  fair 


18  BACON 

timber-tree  sound  and  perfect ;  how  much  more  to  behold  an  an- 
cient noble  family,  which  hath  stood  against  the  waves  and 
weathers  of  time !  for  new  nobility  is  but  the  act  of  power,  but 
ancient  nobility  is  the  act  of  time." — Of  Nobility. 

11  Your  Majesty's  eloquence  is  indeed  royal,  streaming,  and 
branching  out  in  Nature's  fashion  as  from  a  fountain,  copious 
and  elegant,  original  and  inimitable." — Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing. 

"A  man  shall  find  in  the  traditions  of  astrology  some  pretty 
and  apt  divisions  of  men's  natures,  according  to  the  predom- 
inances of  the  planets  ;  lovers  of  quiet,  lovers  of  action,  lovers 
of  victory,  lovers  of  honour,  lovers  of  pleasure,  lovers  of  art, 
lovers  of  change,  and  so  forth.  ...  Of  much  like  kind  are 
those  impressions  of  nature  which  are  imposed  upon  the  mind  by 
the  sex,  by  the  age,  by  the  region,  by  the  health  and  sickness, 
by  beauty  and  deformity,  and  the  like,  which  are  inherent  and 
not  extern  ;  and  again,  those  which  are  caused  by  extern  fortune  ; 
as  sovereignty,  nobility,  obscure  birth,  riches,  want,  magistracy, 
privateness,  prosperity,  adversity,  constant  fortune,  variable 
fortune,  and  the  like." — Advancement  of  Learning. 

8.  Intellectual  Elevation. —  "  In  the  tone  of  his  mind 
there  is  something  imperial.  When  he  writes  on  buildings, 
he  speaks  of  a  palace,  with  spacious  entrances  and  courts  and 
banqueting  halls  ;  when  he  writes  on  gardens,  he  speaks  of 
alleys  and  mounts,  waste  places  and  fountains — of  a  garden 
'  which  is  indeed  prince-like.'  " — Alexander  Smith. 

"  All  who  read  Bacon  are  impressed  with  a  certain  dignity, 
majesty,  and  grandeur  in  his  intelligence." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  He  views  objects  from  the  greatest  height,  and  his  re- 
flections acquire  a  sublimity  in  proportion  to  their  profundity, 
as  in  deep  wells  of  water  we  see  the  sparkling  of  the  highest 
fixed  stars." — Hazlitt. 

"  The  quality  of  strength  in  his  style  is  intellectual  rather 
than  emotional.  In  his  narrative  there  is  very  little  expres- 
sion of  feeling  ;  the  strength  comes  chiefly  from  conciseness, 
secured  by  comprehensive  statement,  pregnant  metaphor,  and 


BACON  19 

occasional  strokes  of  epigrammatic    condensation.     . 
To  read  the  productions  of  Bacon's  vigorous  and  subtile  in- 
tellect has  a  bracing  influence." — Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When  the  mind  goes  deeper  and  sees  the  dependence  of  the 
causes  and  works  of  Providence,  it  will  easily  perceive,  accord- 
ing to  the  mythology  of  the  poets,  that  the  upper  link  of  Nat- 
ure's chain  is  fastened  to  Jupiter's  throne." — Advancement  of 
Learning. 

"The  first  creature  of  God,  in  the  works  of  days,  was  the  light 
of  the  sense,  the  last  was  the  light  of  reason,  and  his  Sabbath 
work,  ever  since,  is  the  illumination  of  the  spirit.  First  he 
breathed  light  upon  the  face  of  the  matter,  or  chaos,  then  he 
breathed  light  into  the  face  of  man  ;  and  still  he  breatheth  and 
inspireth  light  into  the  face  of  his  chosen." — Of  Truth. 

"  The  understanding  when  left  to  itself  in  a  man  of  a  steady, 
patient,  and  reflecting  disposition,  makes  some  attempt  in  the 
right  direction,  but  with  little  effect,  since  the  understanding,  un- 
directed and  unassisted,  is  unequal  and  unfit  for  the  task  of 
vanquishing  the  obscurity  of  things.  "—Novum  Organum. 


MILTON,  1608-1674. 

Biographical  Outline. — JOHN  MILTON,  born  December 
9,  1608,  in  Bread  Street,  Cheapside,  London  ;  father  a  scriv- 
ener— a  man  of  scholarly  and  musical  attainments  ;  Milton  is 
first  taught  by  a  private  tutor,  one  Thomas  Young ;  enters  St. 
Paul's  School  not  later  than  1620  ;  is  passionately  devoted  to 
study,  reading  till  midnight  regularly,  while  yet  a  child,  and 
thus  early  injuring  his  eyesight;  he  learns  Latin,  Greek, 
French,  Italian,  and  some  Hebrew ;  is  a  poet  at  ten,  and  is 
devoted  to  Spenser's  "  Faery  Queene ; ' '  writes  two  paraphrases 
of  the  Psalms  before  he  is  fifteen ;  enters  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge,  February  12,  1624-25,  as  a  pensioner,  and  is 
matriculated  on  the  gth  of  the  following  April ;  keeps  every 
term  at  Cambridge,  taking  A.B.  in  March,  1629,  and  A.M. 
in  July,  1632  ;  is  harshly  treated  (tradition  says  whipped)  by 
his  tutor,  one  Chappel ;  is  highly  respected  at  the  university 
for  his  scholarship ;  corresponds  in  Latin  with  his  friends 
Diodati,  Young,  and  Gill,  while  at  Cambridge;  writes  sev- 
eral Latin  poems  and  ' ' Prolusione s  Oratorice"  (published  in 
1674)  as  college  exercises  ;  writes  his  "  Ode  on  the  Nativity  " 
at  Christmas,  1629,  and  his  Sonnet  to  Shakespeare  in  1630 ;  ex- 
presses scorn  for  the  dramatic  performances  seen  at  Cambridge, 
the  narrow  theological  studies  of  his  fellows,  and  their  igno- 
rance of  philosophy;  is  nicknamed  "the  lady"  at  college 
because  of  his  long,  flowing  locks,  his  personal  beauty,  and 
his  sensitiveness ;  becomes  a  good  fencer,  but  holds  himself 
austerely  aloof  from  most  student  society ;  develops  great 
hostility  to  scholasticism  ;  even  while  at  Cambridge  Milton 
already  considered  himself  as  dedicated  to  the  utterance  of 

20 


MILTON  21 

great  thoughts  and  to  the  strictest  chastity,  on  the  ground  that 
"he  who  would  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things  ought 
himself  to  be  a  true  poem  ;  "  Milton  is  educated  with  a  view 
to  taking  holy  orders,  but,  on  leaving  Cambridge,  he  decides 
to  postpone  (but  not  to  abandon)  that  course ;  is  alienated 
from  the  Church  by  the  intolerant  policy  of  Laud ;  soon  de- 
cides to  devote  himself  exclusively  to  literature,  and  settles 
with  his  father  at  Horton,  in  Buckinghamshire,  twelve  miles 
from  London,  where  he  resides  from  1632  to  1638;  while  at 
Horton  Milton  visits  London  frequently,  to  obtain  instruc- 
tion in  music  and  mathematics,  and  writes  his  "Allegro" 
and  ' '  Pen  seroso ;  "  writes  also  his  masque  "Arcades,"  for 
the  Countess-dowager  of  Derby,  and  "Comus,"  for  the  Earl 
of  Bridge  water  (performed  at  Ludlow  Castle  in  September, 
1634,  and  published  by  Milton's  musical  collaborator,  Henry 
Lawes,  without  acknowledging  Milton's  authorship) ;  Milton 
writes  "  Lycidas  "  in  November,  1637,  on  the  death  of  his 
friend  Edward  King;  starts,  in  April,  1638,  on  a  Continental 
tour,  taking  a  servant  and  being  liberally  supplied  with  money 
by  his  father  ;  makes  brief  visits  to  Paris,  Nice,  Genoa,  Leg- 
horn, and  Pisa,  and  spends  two  months  in  Florence  and  two 
more  in  Rome ;  thence  to  Naples,  where  he  learns  of  the 
threatened  revolution,  and  determines  to  return- home,  "lest  I 
should  be  travelling  abroad  while  my  countrymen  were  fight- 
ing for  liberty  ;  "  stops  two  more  months  at  Florence  on  his 
way  homeward,  and  returns  by  way  of  Ferrara,  Bologna,  Ven- 
ice, Verona,  Milan,  and  (probably)  the  Simplon  ;  spends  some 
time  in  Geneva,  and  reaches  England  via  Paris  in  July,  1639; 
while  abroad  he  offends  the  Italians  by  his  strict  morality  and 
his  outspoken  attacks  on  popery,  but  is  received  and  honored 
by  many  eminent  persons,  including  Grotius,  the  Academi- 
cians of  Florence,  Galileo,  and  others ;  during  his  tour  he 
writes  five  Italian  sonnets  and  a  canzone ;  on  his  return,  takes 
lodgings  in  a  tailor's  house  in  St.  Bride's  Churchyard,  Lon- 
don, and  receives  there  his  sister's  two  sons  (aged  eight  and 


22  MILTON 

nine)  as  pupils ;  soon  afterward  takes  "  a  pretty  garden-house  " 
in  Aldersgate  Street ;  establishes  for  himself  and  his  pupils  a 
regime  of  "  hard  study  and  spare  diet,"  allowing  himself  but 
one  "  gaudy  day  "  a  month,  and  carrying  out,  with  his  pupils, 
the  methods  of  education  described  in  his  tractate  on  that 
subject;  in  1643  takes  more  pupils,  and  writes  his  Latin 
idyll  ' '  Epitaphium  Damonis  ;  ' '  sketches  the  plan  of  a  poem 
on  Arthur,  draws  up  a  list  of  ninety-nine  subjects  for  other 
poems,  and  already  contemplates  a  poem  on  "  Paradise  Lost  "  ; 
enters  political  discussion  by  publishing,  anonymously,  in  the 
summer  of  1641,  three  pamphlets — "Of  Reformation  Touching 
Church  Discipline  in  England,"  "Prelatical  Episcopacy,"  and 
"  Animadversions  upon  the  Remonstrance  Defence,"  all  three 
being  vehement  attacks  on  the  episcopacy  and  scathing  re- 
plies to  the  pleas  of  its  adherents;  in  February,  1641-42,  Mil- 
ton publishes,  under  his  own  name,  "  The  Reason  of  Church 
Government  Urged  Against  Prelacy  ;  "  in  April,  1642,  pub- 
lishes his  "Apology,"  defending  himself  against  a  slanderous 
attack  by  Bishop  Hall  and  replying  most  vehemently  in  kind; 
declines  to  enter  the  army  at  the  outbreak  of  the  civil  war  in 
1642,  on  the  ground  that  his  mind  is  stronger  than  his  body, 
and  is  therefore  more  useful  to  the  cause  of  liberty ;  on  May 
21,  1643,  after  a  surprisingly  short  courtship,  Milton  marries 
Mary  Powell,  aged  seventeen,  daughter  of  a  Cavalier  land- 
holder, residing  at  Forest  Hill,  Oxfordshire,  who  had  long 
owed  Milton  a  debt  of  ^312;  soon  afterward,  Milton's 
father,  driven  by  the  Royalists  from  his  home  at  Reading, 
comes  to  live  with  Milton  ;  Milton's  wife  soon  becomes  dis- 
satisfied with  the  dulness  of  his  home  and  the  crying  of  his 
oft-beaten  pupils,  and  Milton  finds  his  wife  stupid  ;  so  she  re- 
turns to  her  father  after  a  month's  trial  of  "  a  philosophical 
life,"  promising  to  return  at  the  ensuing  Michaelmas;  she 
refuses  to  return  ;  Milton's  messenger  is  uncivilly  treated  by 
her  family,  and  then  (within  three  months  of  his  marriage) 
Milton  writes  his  tractate  on  "  The  Doctrine  and  Discipline 


MILTON  23 

of  Divorce,"  in  which  he  justifies  divorce  on  the  ground  of 
incompatibility  or  of  mutual  consent,  especially  if  there  be 
no  children,  and  proposes  sweeping  changes  in  the  marriage- 
laws  ;  the  tractate  makes  him  notorious,  and  he  is  bitterly  at- 
tacked, especially  after  his  second  and  acknowledged  edition 
of  the  tractate  in  February,  1643-44;  publishes  a  second 
pamphlet  on  divorce  in  July,  1644  ;  influenced  by  the  demand 
that  his  books  be  burned  and  by  the  threat  of  prosecution  be- 
cause he  had  not  obtained  a  proper  license  from  the  Stationers' 
Company,  Milton  writes  his  "  Areopagitica"  published  No- 
vember 24,  1644,  and  generally  acknowledged  to  be  the  best 
of  his  prose  works ;  publishes  two  more  pamphlets  on  divorce 
in  1644-45,  and  proposes  to  apply  his  principles  by  marrying 
the  daughter  of  one  Dr.  Davis,  a  lady  immortalized  in  Mil- 
ton's Sonnet  to  "  Lady  Margaret  "  :  meantime  his  wife's  par- 
ent's lose  their  property,  and  she  begs  his  pardon  and  asks  to 
be  received  again  ;  Milton  reluctantly  consents,  and  they  take 
a  house  in  the  Barbican  (a  street  near  Aldersgate  Street)  large 
enough  to  accommodate  his  increasing  number  of  pupils;  by 
Mary  Powell,  Milton  has  four  children  :  Anne,  Mary,  John  (who 
died  in  infancy),  and  Deborah;  Mrs.  Milton  dies  in  1652; 
Milton  publishes  the  first  collected  edition  of  his  poems  in 
1645,  placing  the  Latin  and  the  English  verseson  separate  pages; 
his  pupils  increase  in  number,  and  include  several  sons  of  promi- 
nent families;  in  the  autumn  of  1647  Milton  removes  to  a  house 
in  High  Hoi  born  and  gives  up  teaching  ;  it  is  supposed  that  he 
inherited  a  competency  from  his  father,  who  died  in  March, 
1646-47  ;  in  his  sonnet  to  Fairfax  and  in  other  writings  he 
expresses  deep  sympathy  with  the  Puritan  cause ;  writes  para- 
phrases of  seventeen  of  the  Psalms  and  a  ' '  History  of  Bri  tain ; ' ' 
immediately  after  the  execution  of  Charles  I.,  he  publishes  a 
pamphlet  on  "The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates,"  and  is 
consequently  invited  to  become  Latin  Secretary  to  the  Council 
of  State  ;  he  accepts,  and  takes  office  March  15,  1648-49,  at  a 
salary  of  about  ^730  a  year;  his  duties  are  to  translate  the 


24  MILTON 

foreign  dispatches  of  the  government  into  dignified  Latin,  to 
examine  papers  found  on  suspected  persons,  and  to  act  as  a 
licenser  of  books  ;  he  is  directed  by  the  government  to  answer 
the  "  Eikon  Basilike"  a  book  then  popularly  supposed  to 
have  been  written  by  Charles  I.,  in  defence  of  his  character 
and  position,  but  really  written  by  the  Bishop  of  Exeter; 
Milton  publishes  his  answer  October  6,  1649,  under  the  title 
"  Eikonoklastes"  of  which  a  French  translation  is  ordered 
made  by  the  Council  of  State  ;  Milton  is  ordered  by  the  coun-x 
cil,  in  January,  1650,  to  reply  to  Salmasius,  a  professor  at 
Leyden — "  a  man  of  enormous  reading  and  no  judgment  " — 
whom  the  Scottish  Presbyterians  had  invited  to  write  in  de- 
fence of  their  theological  and  political  position,  and  who  had 
accordingly  published,  in  1649,  the  "  Defensio  Regio  pro 
Carolo  I.;  Milton's  reply,  ' 'Pro Populo  Anglicano  Defensio," 
appears  in  March,  1650,  and  he  refuses  ,£100  voted  him  by 
the  council  as  payment  for  the  work  ;  completes  the  destruction 
of  his  eyesight  by  overwork  on  his"  Defence ;  "  in  March,  1652, 
he  is  attacked  with  gross  personal  abuse  by  one  Peter  du  Mou- 
lin in  a  book  entitled  "  Rcgii  Sanguinis  Clamor  ad  Ca'/um," 
dedicated  to  Alexander  More,  formerly  professor  of  Greek 
at  Geneva,  and  attributed  to  More  by  Milton ;  he  is  or- 
dered by  the  council  to  reply  to  the"  Clamor"  and  pub- 
lishes his  answer  in  May,  1654,  under  the  title  '•'•Defensio 
Stcunda"  a  book  full  of  savage  abuse,  but  containing,  also, 
valuable  autobiographical  passages  and  an  apostrophe  to 
Cromwell ;  More  replies,  denying  the  authorship  of  the 
"  Clamor,"  and  Milton  writes  a  third  book,  "  Pro  Se  Defen- 
sio" in  August,  1655  ;  while  Latin  secretary  he  occupies  for  a 
time  chambers  at  Whitehall ;  later  removes  to  another  "pretty 
garden-house,"  afterward  19  York  Street,  subsequently  oc- 
cupied successively  by  Bentham,  James  Mill,  and  Hazlitt,  and 
demolished  in  1877  ;  he  lives  here  till  the  Restoration  ;  is  as- 
sisted in  his  duties  as  secretary  by  Andrew  Man  ell  and  others; 
in  1655,  apparently  because  of  his  blindness,  Milton's  salary 


MILTON  25 

is  reduced  to  ^150  a  year,  which  was  to  be  paid  during  his 
life,  and  was  soon  increased  to  ^200;  on  November  12, 
1656,  he  marries  Catherine  Woodcock,  by  whom  he  has  one 
child,  but  mother  and  child  die  in  February,  1658  ;  Milton 
is  said  to  have  had  an  allowance  first  from  Parliament  and 
afterward  from  Cromwell  for  the  maintenance  of  a  "  weekly 
table"  for  the  entertainment  of  eminent  foreigners,  who  came 
to  England  especially  to  see  him;  in  1659  he  publishes  two 
pamphlets  favoring  a  purely  voluntary  ecclesiastical  system, 
and  in  1660  one  proposing  that  Parliament  make  itself  perpet- 
ual; in  April,  1660,  writes  "  Brief  Notes,"  attacking  a  royal- 
ist sermon  ;  at  the  Restoration  Milton  conceals  himself  in  a 
friend's  house  in  Bartholomew  Close;  on  June  16,  1660,  it  is 
ordered  by  the  Commons  that  his  "  Pro  Populo  Anglicano  De- 
fensio ' '  be  burned  by  the  common  hangman  and  that  he  be 
indicted  and  taken  into  custody ;  he  is  arrested  during  the  sum- 
mer, but  is  ordered  released  at  the  next  session  on  the  payment 
of  fees  amounting  to  ^150  ;  the  Indemnity  Act  frees  him  from 
all  legal  consequences  of  his  actions  ;  the  lenient  treatment  of 
Milton  was  probably  due  to  the  efforts  of  his  friends  Marvell  and 
D'Avenant,  for  the  latter  of  whom  he  had  formerly  entreated 
when  D'Avenant  had  been  in  danger  of  execution ;  on  regaining 
his  liberty,  Milton  takes  a  house  in  Holborn  and  soon  after- 
ward removes  to  Jewett  Street;  by  the  changes  attendant 
on  the  Restoration  his  income  is  reduced  from  ^£500  to 
about  ^200  a  year ;  Mrs.  Powell,  mother  of  Milton's  first 
wife,  attempts  to  obtain  some  of  his  property,  and  apparently 
succeeds  in  part;  on  February  24,  1662-63,  ne  marries  Eliza- 
beth Minshull,  and  soon  afterward  removes  to  a  small  house 
with  a  garden,  in  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill  Fields,  where  he  re- 
sides till  death,  if  we  except  a  reported  short  sojourn  as  a 
lodger  in  the  house  of  the  bookseller  Millington  ;  during  the 
plague  of  1665  he  retires  to  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  where  "a 
pretty  box  "  was  taken  for  him  by  the  Quaker,  Thomas  Ell- 
wood  ;  Ellwood  had  previously  formed  a  friendship  with  Mil- 


26  MILTON 

ton,  had  read  Latin  books  to  him,  received  from  him  in  the 
"  box  "  at  Chalfont  the  manuscript  of  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and 
suggested  a  poem  on  "Paradise  Regained  ;  "  the  house  at  Chal- 
font is  still  preserved  (1898)  as  a  public  memorial  of  Milton  ; 
he  begins  "  Paradise  Lost  "  in  1658  and  finishes  it  in  1663  ; 
loses  his  house  in  Bread  Street  (inherited  from  his  father)  in 
the  great  fire  of  1666;  on  April  27,  1667,  Milton  sells  the 
copyright  of  "  Paradise  Lost  "  to  Samuel  Simmons,  the  terms 
being  that  Milton  is  to  receive  ^£5  down  and  ^5  additional 
for  each  of  the  first  three  editions  of  not  more  than  1,500  copies 
each;  receives  his  second  ^5  in  April,  1669,  and  these  £10 
are  all  he  ever  received  personally  for  "  Paradise  Lost;  "  in 
1680  Milton's  widow  sells  to  Simmons  a  perpetual  copyright  of 
the  book  for  £8  ;  4,500  copies  were  sold  by  1688  ;  Dryden 
first  appreciated  itsTalue,  saying  of  Milton:  "  This  man  cuts 
us  all  out,  and  the  ancients,  too;  "  with  Milton's  permission, 
Dryden  puts  "  Paradise  Lost  "  into  a  drama  in  rhyme,  under 
the  title  "  A  Heroick  Opera,"  published  in  1674;  Milton  is 
much  visited,  in  his  later  years,  by  foreigners  and  men  of 
rank;  "Paradise  Lost"  is  translated  into  German  and  into 
Latin  in  1682  ;  Milton  publishes  "  Paradise  Regained  "  and 
"Samson  Agonistes  "  together  in  1671,  and  could  never 
bear  to  hear  "  Paradise  Regained  "  pronounced  inferior  to  his 
first  epic;  in  1669  he  publishes  his  Latin  grammar  and  his 
"History  of  Britain,"  written  long  before;  in  1673  puts 
forth  a  new  edition  of  his  early  poems ;  suffers  during  his  last 
years  from  the  gout  and  from  unpleasant  domestic  relations ; 
dies  at  his  house  in  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill  Fields,  November 
8,  1674,  leaving  ^100  each  to  his  "  undutiful  children," 
and  ^600  to  his  widow. 


MILTON  27 

.  BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON    MILTON'S   STYLE. 

Scherer,  E.,  "Essays  on  English  Literature."     New  York,  1891,  Scrib- 

ner,  111-150. 
Bayne,  P.,  "The  Puritan  Revolution."     London,  1878,  James  Clark  & 

Co.,  297-347. 
Channing,    W.   E.,    "Works."     Boston,    1867,   American  Unit.   Ass'n, 

20:   30. 

Coleridge,  H.,  "Essays,"  etc.     London,  1851,  E.  Moxon,  2:  18-28. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "  Latest  Literary  Essays."     New  York,  1892,  Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co. 
Taine,  H.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1874,   Holt, 

I  :  409-456. 
Ward,  T.  H.,  "English  Poets"  (Pattison).     New  York,  1881,  Macmil- 

lan,  2  :  293-306. 

Gilfillan,  G.,  "Literary  Portraits."  Edinburgh,  1851,  J.  Hogg,  2:  1-27. 
Arnold,  M.,  "  Mixed  Essays."  New  York,  1879,  Macmillan,  256-257. 
Hazlitt,  W.,  "  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."  London,  1884,  G.  Bell  & 

Son,  75-90. 
Hallam,  H.,  "Works."    New  York,  1859,  Harper,  i:  131,  and  2:  182, 

and  see  index. 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "Table  Talk."     London,  1882,  G.  Bell  &  Sons,  240-249. 
Newman,  J.  H.,  "  Essays  on  Milton's  Style."     London,  1872,  Longmans, 

54-60. 
Garnett,  R.,  "  John  Milton  "  (Great  Writers).      London,  1890,  W.  Scott, 

v,  index. 
Bagehot,  W.,  "  Works."     Hartford,  1889, Travellers'  Insurance  Co.,  I: 

303-352. 
Pattison,  M.,  "Milton"  (English  Men  of  Letters).     New  York,   1879, 

Harper,  79. 
Saintsbury,  G.,  "A  History  of    Elizabethan    Literature."     New  York, 

1887,  Macmillan,  317-330. 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "Essays"  (Miscellaneous  Works).     New  York,  1880, 

Harper,  I  :    13-64,  and  v,  index. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Among  My  Books."     Boston,  1891,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  274-276. 
Dowden,  E.,  "Studies  in  Literature."     London,   1878,  Kegan    Paul  & 

Co.,  88-90. 
Arnold,  M.,  "  Essays  in  Criticism"  (Second  Series).     New  York,  1888, 

Macmillan,  56-69. 
DeQuincey,    T.,    "Works."     Edinburgh,    1890,    A.  &  C.    Black,    ill 

453-473.  and  4 :  86- i 18. 


28  MILTON 

Johnson,  S.,  "Works"  (Lives  of  the  Poets).  New  York,  1846,  Harp- 
er, 2 :  22-46. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicta."     New  York,  1887,  Scribner,  2:    1-52. 

Minto,  Wm.,  "  English  Prose  Literature."  Edinburgh,  1876,  Black,  311. 

Masson,  D.,  "Essays,  Biographical  and  Critical."  Cambridge,  1856, 
Macmillan,  37-53- 

Brooke,  S.,  "John  Milton."     New  York,  1879,  Appleton,  112-125. 

Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1883, 
Appleton,  112-125. 

Dawson,  G.,  "  Biographical  Lectures."  London,  1886,  Kegan  Paul, 
Trench  &  Co.,  82-88. 

Rice,  A.  T.,  "  Essays  from  North  American  Review  "  (Emerson).  New 
York,  1879,  Appleton,  99-122. 

Dowden,  E.,  "Transcripts  and  Studies."  London,  1888,  Kegan  Paul, 
Trench  &  Co.,  454-473. 

Windsor,  A.  L.,  "  Ethica."     London,  1860,  Smith,  Elder  &Co.,  57-112. 

Browning,  E.  B.,  "Essays  on  the  Poets."  New  York,  1863,  James 
Miller,  192-199. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 194-211. 

Reed,  H.,  "  British  Poets."     Philadelphia,  1857,  Parry  &  Macmillan,  I  : 

199-233- 
Hunt,  L.,  "  Selections  from  English  Poets."     Philadelphia,  1854,  W.  P. 

Hazard,  172. 

Masson,  D.,  "  Three  Devils. "     London,  1874,  Macmillan,  125-150. 
Philips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1885, 

Harper,  I  :   293-373. 

Carlyle,  T.,  "Essays."     London,  1869,  Chapman  &  Hall,  2:  64. 
Welsh,   A.  H.,    "The   Development  of  English   Literature."     Chicago, 

1884,  Griggs,  I  :  472-495- 
Hunt,  T.  W.,  "English  Prose,  and  Prose  Writers."     New  York,  1887, 

Armstrong,  246-264. 
Dennis,  J.,  "  Heroes  of  Literature."    London,  1883,  Society  for  Promoting 

Christian  Knowledge,  114-147. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  "  Lives  of  Famous  Poets."     London,  1878,  E.  Moxon, 

65-79. 
Dobson,  W.  T.,  "The  Classic  Poets."     London,  1879,  Smith,  Elder  & 

Co.,  394-452- 
Seeley,  J.  R. ,  "  Lectures  and  Essays."     London,  1870,  Macmillan,  89- 

154- 

Yonge,  C.  D.,  "Three  Centuries  of  English  Literature."  New  York, 
1889,  Appleton,  185-210. 


MILTON  29 

Hutton,  L.,  "Literary  Landmarks  of  London."  New  York,  1892, 
Harper,  210-216. 

Howitt,  Wm.,  "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Authors."  London,  1847, 
Bentley,  i :  67-104. 

Masson,  D.,  "In  the  Footsteps  of  the  Poets."  New  York,  1893,  Whit- 
taker,  13-105. 

Sterling.  John,  "Essays  and  Tales."     London,  1848,  Parker,  I  :   73-87. 

Contemporary  Review,  19:    198-209  (Do wden) ;  22:  427-460  (P.  Bayne). 

Quarterly  Review,  143:  186-204;  32:  442-457;  63:  29-61  (J.  H. 
Lord). 

Edinburgh  Rei'iew,  69 :    112-121  (Channing) ;  42:   304-346  (Macaulay). 

Christian  Examiner,  57:  323-339  (S.  Osgood)  ;  66:  401-431  (G.  E. 
Ellis) ;  3  :  29-77  (w-  E-  Channing). 

LittelTs  Li-'hig  Age,  44  :   497  (Lamartine). 

British  Quarterly,  29:   185-214;    10:   229-254. 

International  Review,  9:    125-135  (H.  C.  Lodge). 

North  British  Review,  30:   281-309;  16:  295-335  (D.  Masson). 

Fortnightly  Revie-a,  54:   510-519  (Pollock). 

The  Nation,  47:  310  (E. S.);  13:  91-92  (Allen);  17:  165-166  (Al- 
len); 31:  15-16  (Allen);  26:  342-344  (Diman) ;  30:  30-32  (G. 
Smith). 

Century  Magazine,  36:   53-55  (M.  Arnold). 

North  American  Review,  47 :  56-73  (Emerson) ;  82  :  388-404  (Whit- 
ney); 22:  364-373;  31:  101-103  and  338  and  45J-452;  3& : 
243-246;  41:  375-382  (Channing);  46:  216-217  (Emerson); 
126:  536-543  (D.  Masson). 

National  Magazine,  I:   9-13. 

Methodist  Quarterly  Review,  17:   542-559(7.  H.  Newhall). 

Foreign  Quarterly  Review,  10  :    508-513. 

Eclectic  Review,  25  :   288-291  ;  89  :   507-521  (J.  A.  St.  John). 

New  Monthly  Magazine,  40  :   39-50. 

The  At/i entfiim,  2(1884):   359-360. 

Fortnightly  Magazine,  54:    510-520  (Pollock). 

Edinburgh  Revim\  69:   214-230  (J.  M.  Mason). 

Bibliotheca  Sacra,  4:   251-269  (T.  W.  Hunt). 

Presbyterian  Review,  4  :  681-709  (Van  Dyke). 

Presbyterian  Quarterly,  I  :   382-395  (Gillette). 

Unitarian  Revie-M,  20 :   242-^250  (J.  H.  Allen). 

De  Bow's  Commercial  Rt~!'ieit>,  29  :   430-441  (G.  Fitzhugh). 

Fraser's  Magazine,  17:   627-635  (W.  E.  Channing). 

Congregational  Magazine,  10  :  33-41  (J.  H.  Todd);  17:  217-225  (Rob- 
ert Fletcher). 


30  MILTON 

Colburn's  NrM  Monthly  Magazine,  40  :   39-51. 

Contemporary     Review,.   19:     198-211     (E.    Dowden)  ;     22:     427-460 

(Bayne). 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  31  :   554-556  (J.  C.   Shairp)  and  380-387  (M. 

Pattison). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Majestic  Eloquence— Magnificence — Sublim- 
ity.— "  This  is  the  quality,"  says  Mark  Pattison,  "  which  the 
poverty  of  our  language  tries  to  express  by  the  words  solem- 
nity, gravity,  majesty,  nobility,  loftiness,  and  which,  name 
it  as  we  may,  we  all  feel  in  reading  '  Paradise  Lost.' 
The  '  Areopagitica '  is  a  copious  flood  of  majestic  eloquence, 
the  outpouring  of  a  noble  soul  with  a  divine  scorn  of  narrow 
dogma  and  paltry  aims."  Macaulay  declares  that  Milton's 
prose  writings  "abound  with  passages  compared  with  which 
the  finest  declamations  of  Burke  sink  into  insignificance." 
His  pamphlets  are  "orations  rather  than  treatises  or  disser- 
tations." Many  passages  in  his  prose  parallel  "  the  solemn 
music  of  his  own  best  verse." 

"  There  is  something  indescribably  heroical  and  magnifi- 
cent which  overflows  from  Milton,  even  when  he  is  engaged 
in  the  most  miserable  discussions.  .  .  .  The  language  in 
these  pamphlets  is  instinct  with  fire — there  is  no  prose  poetry 
in  the  language  comparable  with  it.  The  eloquence  is  now 
sad,  tender,  and  again  wild  and  tempestuous  as  the  hurricane 
of  heaven.  .  .  .  There  are  moments  when,  shaking  the 
dust  of  argument  from  him,  the  poet  suddenly  bursts  forth 
and  carries  us  off  on  the  torrent  of  an  incomparable  eloquence. 
It  is  no  rhetorical  phrase-making,  it  is  poetic  enthusiasm,  a 
flood  of  images  shed  over  the  dull  and  arid  theme,  a  wing- 
stroke  that  sweeps  us  high  above  piddling  controversies." — 
Edmond  Scherer. 

11  It  [the  '  Areopagitica  ']  is  a  pleading  of  the  highest  elo- 
quence and  courage,  with  interspersed  passages  of  curious  in- 


MILTON  31 

formation,  keen  wit,  and  even  a  rich  humor,  such  as  we  do 
not  commonly  look  for  in  Milton." — David  Masson. 

"  Milton's  prose  works  are  studded  with  words  and  phrases 
of  intense  nobleness,  which  beacon  the  gloom  of  sordid  ages 
and  send  rays  of  star-like  illumination  into  the  dusk  of  com- 
promise, conventionality,  and  hypocrisy.  .  .  .  These 
writings  [of  Milton]  are  wonderful  for  the  truth,  learning, 
subtilty,  and  pomp  of  language." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  It  [the  '  Areopagitica ']  is  the  most  literary  of  Milton's 
prose,  eloquent,  to  the  point,  and  full  of  noble  images,  splen- 
didly wrought  and  fitted  to  their  places.  ...  At  times 
they  rise  into  an  eloquence  which  has  nothing  like  it  in  Eng- 
lish literature  for  grandeur,  music,  splendor." — Stopford 
Brooke. 

"  Among  Milton's  many  great  attributes,  his  mastery  of 
the  sublime  is  the  one  which  has  probably  received  the  most 
frequent  laudation." — W.  M.  Rossetti. 

"  Milton's  chief  talent,  and,  indeed,  his  distinguishing  ex- 
cellence, lies  in  the  sublimity  of  his  thoughts." — Addison. 

"  There  are  splendid  passages  in  Milton's  prose  works,  pas- 
sages where  we  are  carried  away  by  torrents  of  gorgeous  elo- 
quence. ...  In  comparison  with  his  organ  tones  the 
voices  of  contemporary  singers  seem  as  penny  whistles." — 
H.  J.  Nicoll. 

Lowell  calls  the  "  Areopagitica  "  an  "  impassioned  harangue 
of  a  supremely  eloquent  man,"  and  adds  :  "  His  more  elab- 
orate passages  have  the  multitudinous  roll  of  thunder." 

"  We  have  in  Milton  no  trash,  no  effusion  of  pious  senti- 
mentalism,  like  certain  herbs,  too  sweet  to  be  wholesome; 
but  a  strain  that  might  have  been  sung  by  the  angelic  host  on 
the  plains  of  Bethlehem  and  rehearsed  by  the  shepherds  in 
the  ears  of  the  infant  God." — George  Gilfillan. 

Taine  calls  this  quality  "sacerdotal  pomp  and  majesty," 
and  adds,  "As  of  old,  he  went  out  of  this  lower  world  in 
search  of  the  sublime. ' ' 


32  MILTON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Thou,  therefore,  that  sittest  in  light  and  glory  unapproach- 
able, parent  of  angels  and  men  !  next  thee  I  implore,  Omnipotent 
King,  Redeemer  of  the  lost  remnant,  whose  nature  thou  didst 
assume  ;  ineffable  and  everlasting  Love  !  and  thou  the  third 
subsistence  of  divine  infinitude,  illumining  Spirit,  the  joy  and 
solace  of  created  things  !  one  Tri-personal  God-head  !  look  upon 
this  thy  poor  and  almost  spent  and  expiring  church.  .  .  . 
Oh,  let  them  not  bring  about  their  damned  designs — to  reinvolve, 
us  in  that  pitchy  cloud  of  infernal  darkness,  where  \ve  shall  nev- 
ermore see  the  sun  of  thy  truth  again,  never  hope  for  the  cheerful 
dawn,  never  more  hear  the  bird  of  morning  sing." — Animadver- 
sions, etc. 

"  Then,  amidst  the  hymns  and  hallelujahs  of  saints,  someone 
may,  perhaps,  be  heard  offering  at  high  strains  in  new  and  lofty 
measures  to  sing  and  celebrate  thy  divine  mercies  and  marvel- 
lous judgments  in  this  land  throughout  all  ages,  whereby  this 
great  and  warlike  nation,  instructed  and  inured  to  the  fervent  and 
continual  practice  of  truth  and  righteousness,  and  casting  far 
from  her  the  rags  of  her  old  vices,  may  press  on  hard  to  that 
high  and  happy  emulation  to  be  found  the  soberest,  and  wisest, 
and  most  Christian  people  at  that  day  when  thou,  the  eternal, 
and  shortly  expected  King,  shall  open  the  clouds  to  judge  the 
several  kingdoms  of  the  world." — Reformation  in  England. 

"  Ye  are  now  in  the  glorious  way  to  high  virtue  and  matchless 
deeds,  trusted  with  a  most  inestimable  trust,  the  asserting  of  our 
just  liberties.  Ye  have  a  nation  that  expects  now,  and  from 
mighty  sufferings  aspires  to  be  the  example  of  all  Christendom 
to  a  perfect  reforming.  Dare  to  be  as  great,  as  ample,  and  as 
eminent  in  the  fair  progress  of  your  noble  designs  as  the  full 
and  goodly  stature  of  truth  and  excellence  itself;  as  unlimited 
by  petty  precedents  and  copies  as  your  unquestionable  calling 
from  Heaven  gives  you  power  to  be." — On  Divorce. 

2.  Gorgeous,   Often   Excessive,   Imagery.—"  He 

breaks  forth  into  magnificent  images,  he  displays  in  his  style 
the  force  which  he  perceives  around  him  and  in  himself.  Im- 
agination carried  Milton  away  and  enchained  him  in  met- 


MILTON  33 

aphor.  .  .  .  Overloaded  with  ornaments,  infinitely 
prolonged,  these  periods  are  triumphant  choruses  of  angelic 
alleluias,  sung  by  deep  voices  to  the  accompaniment  of  ten 
thousand  harps  of  gold." — Taine. 

"  He  was  rich  in  the  cumulative  treasures  of  an  exhaustless 
imagination,  sometimes  lavished  with  the  imprudence  of  a  too 
prodigal  hand.  .  .  .  If,  in  a  general  summary  of  Milton's 
characteristics,  I  should  be  asked  to  point  out  the  predominat- 
ing feature  in  his  organism,  I  should  unhesitatingly  direct  at- 
tention to  his  imagination." — A.  C.  Windsor. 

Macaulay  compares  the  gorgeous  splendor  of  Milton's  words 
and  imagery,  his  weighty  aud  ornate  magnificence,  to  a  per- 
fect field  of  cloth-of-gold.  "  The  style,"  he  says,  "  is  stiff 
with  gorgeous  embroidery.  It  is,  to  borrow  his  own  majestic 
language,  '  a  sevenfold  chorus  of  hallelujahs  and  harping  sym- 
phonies.' '  Many  of  his  figures — his  "jewels  five  words 
long  " — seem  to  be  brought  in  for  their  own  sake  instead  of 
growing  naturally  out  of  the  thought. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a  noble  and  puissant  nation,  rous- 
ing herself  like  a  strong  man  after  sleep  and  shaking  her  invin- 
cible locks  :  methinks  I  see  her  as  an  eagle  mewing  her  mighty 
youth  and  kindling  her  undazzled  eyes  at  the  full  mid-day  beam  ; 
purging  and  unsealing  her  long-abused  sight  at  the  fountain  itself 
of  heavenly  radiance  ;  while  the  whole  noise  of  timorous  and 
flocking  birds,  with  those  also  that  love  the  twilight,  flutter  about, 
amazed  at  what  she  means,  and  in  their  envious  gabble  would 
prognosticate  a  year  of  sects  and  schisms." — Areopagitica. 

'•'  Then  was  the  priest  set  to  con  his  motions  and  his  postures, 
his  liturgies  and  his  lisures  [lessons],  till  the  soul,  by  this  means 
of  overbodying  herself,  given  up  justly  to  fleshly  delights,  bated 
her  wing  apace  downward,  and  rinding  the  ease  she  had  from  her 
visible  and  sensuous  colleague,  the  body,  in  performance  of  re- 
ligious duties,  her  pinions  now  broken  and  flagging,  shifted  off 
from  herself  the  labor  of  high  soaring  any  more." — Reformation 
in  England. 


34  MILTON 

"  Then  was  the  sacred  Bible  sought  out  of  the  dusty  corners 
where  profane  falsehood  and  neglect  had  thrown  it,  the  schools 
opened,  divine  and  human  learning  raked  out  of  the  embers  of 
forgotten  tongues,  the  princes  and  cities  trooping  apace  to  the 
new-erected  banner  of  salvation ;  the  martyrs,  with  the  un- 
resistible  might  of  weakness,  shaking  the  power  of  darkness  and 
scorning  the  fiery  rage  of  the  old  red  dragon." — Reformation  in 
England, 

3.  Intense  Energy — Vituperation. — This  quality  of 
Milton's  style  appears  especially  in  the  boldness  of  his  figures 
and  the  fierceness  of  his  invectives.  His  controversial  writ- 
ings abound  in  sharp  rejoinder  and  vituperation,  often  de- 
scending to  unpardonable  coarseness  and  insult.  In  the  words 
of  Edmond  Scherer,  "Luther  and  Calvin,  those  virtuosos  of  in- 
sult, had  not  gone  farther. ' '  It  was  an  age  of  fierce  and  coarse 
controversy,  and  Milton  felt  called  to  defend  himself  and  his 
cause  with  the  same  weapons  that  his  enemies  used. 

We  have  his  own  confession  that  he  entered  the  contest  un- 
willingly, for  he  says  :  "  Surely,  to  every  good  and  peaceable 
man,  it  must  in  nature  needs  be  a  hateful  thing  to  be  the  dis- 
pleaser  and  molester  of  thousands  ;  much  better  would  it  like 
him,  doubtless,  to  be  the  messenger  of  gladness  and  content- 
ment, which  is  his  chief  intended  business  to  all  mankind,  but 
that  they  resist  and  oppose  their  own  happiness.  But  when 
God  commands  to  take  the  trumpet  and  blow  a  dolorous  or  a 
jarring  blast,  it  lies  not  in  man's  will  what  he  shall  say  or 
what  he  shall  conceal." 

"In  his  earliest  prose  works  we  are  aware  of  a  gigantic 
strength,  a  clash  and  clang  of  militant  energy.     In  the  prose 
the  torrent  foams,  leaps,  rages,  tosses  rocks  about. 
The  tempest  hurtles  through  the  air,  driving  the  clouds  before 
it  like  the  routed  autumn  leaves." — Peter  Bayne. 


MILTON  35 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  You  scrape  together  whatever  seems  to  make  for  your  opinion 
either  out  of  ostentation  or  out  of  weakness  ;  you  would  leave  out 
nothing  that  you  could  find  in  a  baker's  or  a  barber's  shop  ;  nay, 
you  would  be  glad  of  anything  that  looked  like  an  argument  from 
the  very  hangman." — Defence, 

"  That  all  this  is  true,  whoso  desires  to  know  at  large  with  least 
pains  and  expects  not  here  overlong  rehearsals  of  that  which  is 
by  others  already  so  judiciously  gathered,  let  him  hasten  to  be 
acquainted  with  that  noble  volume  written  by  our  learned  Selden, 
'  Of  the  Law  of  Nature  and  of  Nations,'  a  work  more  useful  and 
more  worthy  to  be  perused  by  whosoever  studies  to  be  a  great 
man  in  wisdom,  equity,  and  justice  than  all  those  '  decretals  and 
sumless  sums,'  which  the  pontifical  clerks  have  doted  on,  ever 
since  that  unfortunate  mother  famously  sinned  thrice,  and  died 
impenitent  of  her  bringing  into  the  world  those  two  misbegotten 
infants,  and  forever  infants,  Lombard  and  Gratian,  him  the  com- 
piler of  canon  iniquity,  the  other  the  Tubal  Cain  of  scholastic 
sophistry,  whose  overspreading  barbarism  hath  not  only  infused 
their  own  bastardy  upon  the  fruitfullest  part  of  human  learning, 
not  only  dissipated  and  dejected  the  clear  light  of  nature  in  us, 
and  of  nations,  but  hath  tainted  also  the  fountains  of  divine  doc- 
trine, and  rendered  the  pure  and  solid  law  of  God  unbeneficial 
to  us  by  their  calumnious  dunceries." — On  Divorce. 

"  You  who  know  so  many  tongues,  who  read  so  many  books, 
who  write  so  much  about  them,  you  are  yet  but  an  ass.  .  .  . 
O  most  drivelling  of  asses,  you  come  driven  by  a  woman,  with 
the  cured  heads  of  bishops  whom  you  had  wounded,  a  little  image 
of  the  great  beast  of  the  Apocalypse." — Reply  to  Salmasius. 

4.  Involution  and  Inversion.— The  difficulties  in  Mil- 
ton's prose  style  would  he  sufficient  to  exclude  a  less  energetic 
author  from  the  list  of  master  -writers.  His  "  page-long  pe- 
riods "  are  both  obscure  and  wearisome.  In  the  words  of 
Pattison,  "  he  does  not  seem  to  have  any  notion  of  what  a 
period  means.  He  leaves  off,  not  when  the  sense  closes,  but 
when  he  is  out  of  breath."  His  controversial  writings  bear 
the  marks  of  reckless  haste  in  construction.  Hales  calls  him 


36  MILTON 

"  the  last  of  the  Titans — the  last  great  writer  in  the  old  pe- 
riodic style,"  and  adds,  "  he  had  more  to  say  than  he  could 
say.  His  thoughts  rush  upon  him  in  a  throng  that  he  can  at 
times  scarcely  order  and  control.  His  utterance  is  almost 
choked."  The  "stiff  Latinity  "  that  causes  Shaw  to  call 
Milton  "the  most  Roman  of  English  authors,"  is  a  blemish 
that  belongs  to  nearly  all  the  Elizabethan  prose.  Harsh  in- 
versions and  cumbrous  construction  everywhere  abound. 

Yet  no  less  an  authority  than  William  Ellery  Channing 
excuses  Milton's  sins  of  arrangement  as  follows  : — 

"  It  is  objected  to  his  prose-writings  that  his  style  is  difficult 
and  obscure,  abounding  in  involutions,  transpositions,  and 
Latinisms;  that  his  protracted  sentences  exhaust  and  weary  the 
mind  and  too  often  yield  it  no  better  recompense  than  con- 
fused and  indistinct  perceptions.  .  .  .  We  mean  not  to 
deny  that  these  charges  have  some  grounds  ;  but  they  seem 
to  us  much  exaggerated  ;  and  when  we  consider  that  the  dif- 
ficulties of  Milton's  style  have  almost  sealed  up  his  prose- 
writings,  we  cannot  but  lament  the  fastidiousness  and  effem- 
inacy of  modern  readers.  We  know  that  simplicity  and 
perspicuity  are  important  qualities  of  style  ;  but  there  are 
vastly  nobler  and  more  important  ones,  such  as  energy  and 
richness,  and  in  these  Milton  is  not  surpassed.  The  best 
style  is  not  that  which  puts  the  reader  most  easily  and  in  the 
shortest  time  in  possession  of  the  writer's  naked  thoughts ; 
but  that  which  is  the  truest  image  of  a  great  intellect,  which 
conveys  fully  and  carries  furthest  into  other  souls  the  con- 
ceptions and  feelings  of  a  profound  and  lofty  spirit.  To  be 
universally  intelligible  is  not  the  highest  merit.  A  great 
mind  cannot,  without  injurious  restraint,  shrink  itself  to  the 
grasp  of  common,  passive  readers.  Its  natural  movement  is 
free,  bold,  and  majestic ;  and  it  ought  not  to  be  required  to 
part  with  these  attributes  that  the  multitude  may  keep  pace 
with  it.  A  full  mind  will  naturally  overflow  in  long  sentences  ; 
and  in  the  moment  of  inspiration,  when  thick-coming  thoughts 


MILTON  37 

and  images  crowd  on  it,  will  often  pour  them  forth  in  a  splen- 
did confusion,  dazzling  to  common  readers,  but  kindling  to 
congenial  spirits.  There  are  writings  which  are  clear  through 
their  shallowness.  We  must  not  expect  in  the  ocean  the  trans- 
parency of  the  calm  inland  stream.  For  ourselves,  we  love 
what  is  called  easy  reading  perhaps  too  well,  especially  in  our 
hours  of  relaxation  ;  but  we  love,  too,  to  have  our  faculties 
tasked  by  master-spirits.  We  delight  in  long  sentences  in 
which  a  great  truth,  instead  of  being  broken  up  into  numer- 
ous periods,  is  spread  out  in  its  full  proportions,  is  irradiated 
with  variety  of  illustration  and  imagery,  is  set  forth  in  a 
splendid  affluence  of  language,  and  flows,  like  a  full  stream, 
with  a  majestic  harmony  which  fills  at  once  the  ear  and  soul." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  They  who  to  states  and  governors  of  the  commonwealth  direct 
their  speech,  High  Court  of  Parliament,  or,  wanting  such  access 
in  a  private  condition,  write  that  which  they  foresee  may  advance 
the  public  good ;  I  suppose  them  as  at  the  beginning  of  no  mean 
endeavor,  not  a  little  altered  and  moved  inwardly  in  their  minds  : 
some  with  doubt  of  what  will  be  the  success,  others  with  fear  of 
what  will  be  the  censure  ;  some  with  hope,  others  with  confi- 
dence of  what  they  have  to  speak." — Areopagitica. 

"  Whose  unerring  guidance  and  conduct  having  followed  as  a 
loadstar,  witk  all  diligence  and  fidelity,  in  this  question,  I  trust, 
through  the  help  of  that  illuminating  Spirit  which  hath  favored 
me,  to  have  done  no  every  day's  work,  in  asserting,  after  many 
the  words  of  Christ,  with  other  scriptures  of  great  concernment 
from  burdensome  and  remorseless  obscurity,  tangled  with  man- 
ifold repugnancies,  to  their  native  lustre  and  consent  between 
each  other  ;  hereby  also  dissolving  tedious  and  Gordian  difficul- 
ties ;  which  have  hitherto  molested  the  church  of  God,  and  are 
now  decided,  not  with  the  sword  of  Alexander,  but  with  the  im- 
maculate hands  of  charity,  to  the  unspeakable  good  of  Christen- 
dom."— On  Divorce. 

"  And  if  others  may  chance  to  spend  more  time  with  you  in 
canvassing  later  antiquity,  I  suppose  it  is  not  for  that  they  ground 
themselves  thereon  ;  but  that  they  endeavor  by  showing  the  cor- 


38  MILTON 

ruptions,  uncertainties,  and  disagreements  of  those  volumes,  and 
the  easiness  of  erring,  or  overslipping  in  such  a  boundless  and 
vast  search,  if  they  may  not  convince  those  that  are  so  strongly 
persuaded  thereof ;  yet  to  free  ingenious  minds  from  an  over- 
awful  esteem  of  those  more  ancient  than  trusty  fathers,  whom 
custom  and  fond  opinion,  weak  principles,  and  the  neglect  of 
sounder  and  superior  knowledge  hath  exalted  so  high  as  to  have 
gained  them  a  blind  reverence ;  whose  books  in  bigness  and 
number  so  endless  and  immeasurable,  I  cannot  think  that  either 
God  or  nature,  either  divine  or  human  wisdom,  did  ever  mean 
should  be  a  rule  or  reliance  to  us  in  the  decision  of  any  weighty 
or  positive  doctrine." — Animadversions. 


5.  Inequality— Incongruity. — "It  is  not  uncom- 
mon," says  Channing,  "  to  find,  in  the  same  sentence,  his 
affluent  genius  pouring  forth  magnificent  images  and  expres- 
sions and  suddenly  his  deep  scorn  for  his  opponents  suggest- 
ing and  throwing  into  the  midst  of  this  splendor  sarcasms  and 
degrading  comparisons  altogether  at  variance  with  the  gen- 
eral strain."  Concerning  the  same  characteristic,  Haliam  re- 
marks: "The  majestic  soul  of  Milton  breathes  such  high 
thoughts  as  had  not  been  uttered  before ;  yet  even  here  he 
frequently  sinks  in  a  single  instant,  as  is  usual  with  our  old 
writers,  from  his  highest  flights  to  the  ground." 

"  There  are  passages  which  for  richness  of  texture,  harmony 
of  tone,  and  artistic  distribution  of  parts,  can  hardly  be 
matched  in  our  language ;  but  that  equable  distinction  which 
is  the  constant  note  of  his  verse  is  wanting.  ...  A  sen- 
tence builded  majestically  with  every  help  of  art  and  imagi- 
nation too  often  thrusts  heavenward  from  a  huddle  of  vulgar 
pentices  [sheds]  such  as  used  to  cluster  about  mediaeval  cathe- 
drals. Never  was  such  inequality.  He  is  careless  of  euphony, 
seeming  to  prefer  words  not  only  low  but  harsh,  and  such 
superlatives  as  '  virtuousest,'  '  viciousest,'  '  sheepishest.' ' 
— Lowell. 

"  The  prose  works  descend  to  brutalities  of  personal  abuse 


MILTON  39 

and  recrimination  often  coarse,  and  are  full  of  the  miseries  of 
debate.  We  slip  from  passages  full  of  stately  thought  and 
splendid  diction  into  passages  which  we  are  almost  ashamed 
to  read." — Stopford Brooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thus  large  I  have  purposely  been,  that  if  I  have  been  justly 
taxed  with  this  crime,  it  may  come  upon  me,  after  all  this  my 
confession,  with  a  tenfold  shame  ;  but  if  I  have  hitherto  de- 
served no  such  opprobrious  word  or  suspicion,  I  may  hereby  en- 
gage myself  now  openly  to  the  faithful  observation  of  what  I  have 
professed.  I  go  on  to  show  you  the  unbridled  impudence  of  this 
loose  railer,  who,  having  once  begun  his  race,  regards  not  how 
far  he  flies  out  beyond  all  truth  and  shame  ;  who  from  the  single 
notice  of  the  "Animadversions,"  as  he  protests,  will  undertake  to 
tell  ye  the  very  clothes  I  wear,  though  he  be  much  mistaken  in 
my  wardrobe  ;  and  like  a  son  of  Belial,  without  the  hire  of  Jeze- 
bel, charges  me  '  of  blaspheming  God  and  the  King,'  as  ordina- 
rily as  he  imagines  '  me  to  drink  sack  and  swear,'  merely  because 
this  was  a  shred  in  his  commonplace  book,  and  seemed  to  come 
off  roundly,  as  if  he  were  some  empiric  of  false  accusations,  to 
try  his  poisons  upon  me,  whether  they  would  work  or  not." — 
Apology  for  Smcctymnuus. 

"  Who  can  with  patience  hear  this  filthy,  rascally  fool  speak  so 
irreverently  of  persons  eminent  both  in  greatness  and  piety  ?  Dare 
you  compare  King  David  with  King  Charles  ;  a  most  religious 
king  and  prophet  with  a  superstitious  prince,  and  who  was  but  a 
novice  in  the  Christian  religion  ;  a  most  prudent,  wise  prince 
with  a  weak  one  ;  a  valiant  prince  with  a  cowardly  one  ;  finally, 
a  most  just  prince  with  a  most  unjust  one  ?  " — Defence  of  the  Peo- 
ple, etc. 

"But  ever  blessed  be  He,  and  ever  glorified,  that  from  his 
high  watch-tower  in  the  heavens,  discerning  the  crooked  ways  of 
perverse  and  cruel  men,  hath  hitherto  maimed  and  infatuated  all 
their  damnable  inventions  and  deluded  their  great  wizards  with 
a  delusion  fit  for  fools  and  children  ;  had  God  been  so  minded, 
He  could  have  sent  a  spirit  of  mutiny  amongst  us,  as  He  did  be- 
tween Abimelech  and  the  Shechemites,  to  have  made  our  funerals, 
and  slain  heaps  more  in  number  than  the  miserable  surviving 


38  MILTON 

ruptions,  uncertainties,  and  disagreements  of  those  volumes,  and 
the  easiness  of  erring,  or  overslipping  in  such  a  boundless  and 
vast  search,  if  they  may  not  convince  those  that  are  so  strongly 
persuaded  thereof ;  yet  to  free  ingenious  minds  from  an  over- 
awful  esteem  of  those  more  ancient  than  trusty  fathers,  whom 
custom  and  fond  opinion,  weak  principles,  and  the  neglect  of 
sounder  and  superior  knowledge  hath  exalted  so  high  as  to  have 
gained  them  a  blind  reverence ;  whose  books  in  bigness  and 
number  so  endless  and  immeasurable,  I  cannot  think  that  either 
God  or  nature,  either  divine  or  human  wisdom,  did  ever  mean 
should  be  a  rule  or  reliance  to  us  in  the  decision  of  any  weighty 
or  positive  doctrine." — Animadversions. 


5.  Inequality— Incongruity. — "It  is  not  uncom- 
mon," says  Channing,  "  to  find,  in  the  same  sentence,  his 
affluent  genius  pouring  forth  magnificent  images  and  expres- 
sions and  suddenly  his  deep  scorn  for  his  opponents  suggest- 
ing and  throwing  into  the  midst  of  this  splendor  sarcasms  and 
degrading  comparisons  altogether  at  variance  with  the  gen- 
eral strain."  Concerning  the  same  characteristic,  Hallam  re- 
marks :  "The  majestic  soul  of  Milton  breathes  such  high 
thoughts  as  had  not  been  uttered  before ;  yet  even  here  he 
frequently  sinks  in  a  single  instant,  as  is  usual  with  our  old 
writers,  from  his  highest  flights  to  the  ground." 

"  There  are  passages  which  for  richness  of  texture,  harmony 
of  tone,  and  artistic  distribution  of  parts,  can  hardly  be 
matched  in  our  language ;  but  that  equable  distinction  which 
is  the  constant  note  of  his  verse  is  wanting.  ...  A  sen- 
tence builded  majestically  with  every  help  of  art  and  imagi- 
nation too  often  thrusts  heavenward  from  a  huddle  of  vulgar 
pentices  [sheds]  such  as  used  to  cluster  about  medieval  cathe- 
drals. Never  was  such  inequality.  He  is  careless  of  euphony, 
seeming  to  prefer  words  not  only  low  but  harsh,  and  such 
superlatives  as  '  virtuousest,'  '  viciousest,'  '  sheepishest.'  ' 
— Lowell. 

"  The  prose  works  descend  to  bruttJities  of  personal  abuse 


MILTON  39 

and  recrimination  often  coarse,  and  are  full  of  the  miseries  of 
debate.  We  slip  from  passages  full  of  stately  thought  and 
splendid  diction  into  passages  which  we  are  almost  ashamed 
to  read." — Stopford Brooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thus  large  I  have  purposely  been,  that  if  I  have  been  justly- 
taxed  with  this  crime,  it  may  come  upon  me,  after  all  this  my 
confession,  with  a  tenfold  shame  ;  but  if  I  have  hitherto  de- 
served no  such  opprobrious  word  or  suspicion,  I  may  hereby  en- 
gage myself  now  openly  to  the  faithful  observation  of  what  I  have 
professed.  I  go  on  to  show  you  the  unbridled  impudence  of  this 
loose  railer,  who,  having  once  begun  his  race,  regards  not  how 
far  he  flies  out  beyond  all  truth  and  shame  ;  who  from  the  single 
notice  of  the  "Animadversions,"  as  he  protests,  will  undertake  to 
tell  ye  the  very  clothes  I  wear,  though  he  be  much  mistaken  in 
my  wardrobe ;  and  like  a  son  of  Belial,  without  the  hire  of  Jeze- 
bel, charges  me  '  of  blaspheming  God  and  the  King,'  as  ordina- 
rily as  he  imagines  '  me  to  drink  sack  and  swear,'  merely  because 
this  was  a  shred  in  his  commonplace  book,  and  seemed  to  come 
off  roundly,  as  if  he  were  some  empiric  of  false  accusations,  to 
try  his  poisons  upon  me,  whether  they  would  work  or  not.  "- 
Apology  for  Smectymnuus. 

11  Who  can  with  patience  hear  this  filthy,  rascally  fool  speak  so 
irreverently  of  persons  eminent  both  in  greatness  and  piety  ?  Dare 
you  compare  King  David  with  King  Charles  ;  a  most  religious 
king  and  prophet  with  a  superstitious  prince,  and  who  was  but  a 
novice  in  the  Christian  religion  ;  a  most  prudent,  wise  prince 
with  a  weak  one  ;  a  valiant  prince  with  a  cowardly  one  ;  finally, 
a  most  just  prince  with  a  most  unjust  one  ?  " — Defence  of  the  Peo- 
ple, etc. 

"But  ever  blessed  be  He,  and  ever  glorified,  that  from  his 
high  watch-tower  in  the  heavens,  discerning  the  crooked  ways  of 
perverse  and  cruel  men,  hath  hitherto  maimed  and  infatuated  all 
their  damnable  inventions  and  deluded  their  great  wizards  with 
a  delusion  fit  for  fools  and  children  ;  had  God  been  so  minded, 
He  could  have  sent  a  spirit  of  mutiny  amongst  us,  as  He  did  be- 
tween Abimelech  and  the  Shechemites,  to  have  made  our  funerals, 
and  slain  heaps  more  in  number  than  the  miserable  surviving 


42  MILTON 

and  the  Learning  of  the  best  Ages  of  the  World  on  its  side." — 
Reply  to  Salmasius. 

"  In  handling  almost  the  greatest  subject  that  ever  was  (with- 
out being  too  tedious  in  it),  I  am  in  hopes  of  attaining  two  things, 
which  indeed  I  earnestly  desire.  The  one  not  to  be  at  all  want- 
ing, as  far  as  in  me  lies,  to  this  most  Noble  Cause  and  most 
worthy  to  be  recorded  to  all  future  ages  ;  the  other,  that  I  may 
appear  to  have  avoided  myself  that  perilousness  of  matter,  and 
redundancy  of  words,  which  I  blame  in  my  antagonist." — Reply 
to  Salmasius. 

7.  Independence — Mental  Isolation — Intolerance. 

— While  closely  allied  to  the  sixth  quality  of  Milton's  style, 
just  discussed,  his  mental  isolation  is  not  identical  with  his 
conscious  inspiration.  The  two  qualities  are  frequently 
found  distinct.  "Like  Dante,"  says  Lowell,  "Milton  was 
forced  to  become  a  party  by  himself.  He  stands  out  in 
marked  and  solitary  individuality,  apart  from  the  great  move- 
ment of  the  Civil  War,  apart  from  the  supine  acquiescence  of 
the  Restoration,  a  self-opinionated,  unforgiving,  unforgetting 
man.  .  .  .  Gentle  as  Milton's  earlier  portraits  would  seem 
to  show  him,  he  had  in  him  by  nature,  or  bred  into  him  by 
fate,  something  of  the  haughty  and  defiant  self-assertion  of 
Dante  and  Michael  Angelo.  In  no  other  author  is  the  man 
so  large  a  part  of  his  works.  Milton's  haughty  conception  of 
himself  enters  into  all  he  says  and  does.  Always  the  neces- 
sity of  this  one  man  became  that  of  the  whole  human  race 
for  the  moment.  There  were  no  walls  so  sacred  but  must  go 
to  the  ground  when  he  wanted  elbow-room  ;  and  he  wanted  a 
great  deal.  .  .  .  It  results  from  the  almost  scornful  with- 
drawal of  Milton  into  the  fortress  of  his  absolute  personality 
that  no  great  poet  is  so  uniformly  self-conscious  as  he.  .  .  . 
He  makes  Deity  a  mouth-piece  for  his  present  theology.  .  .  . 
Now  it  is  precisely  this  audacity  of  self-reliance,  I  suspect, 
which  goes  far  toward  making  him  sublime.  .  .  .  The 
grand  loneliness  of  Milton  in  his  latter  years,  while  it  makes 


MILTON  43 

him  the  most  impressive  figure  in  our  literary  history,  is 
reflected  also  in  his  maturer  poems  by  a  sublime  independence 
of  human  sympathy,  like  that  with  which  mountains  fascinate 
and  rebuff  us." 

"  Narrowness  is  his  fault,  but  the  intense  individuality 
which  often  accompanies  narrowness  is  his  great  virtue — 
a  virtue  which  no  poet,  which  no  writer,  either  in  prose  or 
verse,  has  ever  had  in  greater  measure  than  he." — SaiHfsfatry. 

Speaking  of  Milton's  university  career,  Birrell  says:  "  Mil- 
ton was  not  a  submissive  pupil;  in  fact,  he  was  never  a 
submissive  anything,  for  there  is  point  in  Dr.  Johnson's  mali- 
cious remark,  that,  in  Milton's  opinion,  man  was  born  to  be 
a  rebel  and  woman  to  be  a  slave.  He  considered  a  state 
of  subscription  to  articles  a  state  of  slavery.  .  .  .  That 
Milton  was  both  proud  and  rebellious  cannot  be  disputed. 
.  .  .  The  pamphlet  on  divorce  marks  the  beginning  of  his 
mental  isolation.  Nobody  had  a  word  to  say  for  it." 

"  He  was  isolated  in  his  generation  by  the  very  force  of  his 
genius.  Wordsworth  expresses  this  quality  of  Milton's  style 
and  of  his  character  in  the  single  line,  '  His  soul  was  like  a 
star  and  dwelt  apart.'  " — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  A  want  of  humor,  with  its  usual  concomitant,  a  want  of 
power  to  do  justice  to  men  of  different  types  from  himself, 
was  Milton's  great  defect  through  life." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  For  God,  it  seems,  intended  to  prove  me,  whether  I  durst 
alone  take  up  a  rightful  cause  against  a  world  of  disesteem, 
and  found  I  durst.  My  name  I  did  not  publish,  as  not  willing  it 
should  sway  the  reader  either  for  me  or  against  me.  But  when  I 
was  told  that  the  style,  which  what  it  ails  to  be  so  soon  distin- 
guishable I  cannot  tell,  was  known  by  most  men,  and  that  some 
of  the  clergy  began  to  inveigh  and  exclaim  on  what  I  was 
credibly  informed  they  had  not  read.  I  took  it  then  for  my 
proper  season,  both  to  show  them  a  name  that  could  easily  con- 
temn such  an  indiscreet  kind  of  censure,  and  to  reinforce  the 


44  MILTON 

question  with  a  more  accurate  diligence  ;  that  if  any  of  them 
would  be  so  good  as  to  leave  railing  and  to  let  us  hear  so  much 
of  his  learning  and  Christian  wisdom  as  will  be  strictly  demanded 
of  him  in  his  answering  to  this  problem,  care  was  had  he  should 
not  spend  his  preparations  against  a  nameless  pamphlet." — On 
Divorce. 

"When  the  liberty  of  speech  was  no  longer  subject  to  control, 
all  mouths  began  to  be  opened  against  the  bishops.  ...  I 
saw  that  a  way  was  opening  for  the  establishing  of  real  liberty  ; 
that  the  foundation  was  laying  for  the  deliverance  of  man  from 
the  yoke  of  slavery  and  superstition  ;  .  .  .  and  as  I  had  from 
my  youth  studied  the  distinction  between  civil  and  religious 
rights,  ...  I  determined  to  relinquish  the  other  pursuits  in 
which  I  was  engaged,  and  to  transfer  the  whole  force  of  my  tal- 
ents and  my  industry  to  this  one  important  object." — Second 
Defence. 

"  You  cannot  be  truly  free  unless  we  are  free  too  :  for  such  is 
the  nature  of  things  that  he  who  entrenches  on  the  liberty  of 
others  is  the  first  to  lose  his  own  and  become  a  slave.  But  if  you, 
who  have  hitherto  been  the  patron  and  tutelary  genius  of  liberty  ; 
if  you,  who  are  exceeded  by  no  one  in  justice,  in  piety,  and  good- 
ness, should  hereafter  invade  that  liberty  which  you  have  de- 
fended, your  conduct  must  be  fatally  operative,  not  only  against 
the  cause  of  liberty  but  the  general  interests  of  piety  and  vir- 
tue. Your  integrity  and  virtue  will  appear  to  have  evaporated, 
your  faith  in  religion  to  have  been  small ;  your  character  with 
posterity  will  dwindle  into  insignificance,  by  which  a  most  de- 
structive blow  will  be  levelled  against  the  happiness  of  mankind." 
— Second  Defence. 

"  For  he  who  freely  magnifies  what  hath  been  nobly  done,  and 
fears  not  to  declare  as  freely  what  might  be  done  better,  gives 
ye  [the  Lords  and  Commons]  the  best  covenant  of  his  fidelity."— 
— A  reopagitica . 

8.  Moral  Elevation— Purity.— Carlyle  has  called  Mil- 
ton "the  moral  king  of  English  literature."  In  his  second 
Defence  of  the  People  of  England,  Milton  declares,  concern- 
ing his  experience  on  the  Continent:  "  I  again  take  God  to 
witness  that,  in  all  those  places  where  so  many  things  are  con- 


MILTON  45 

sidered  lawful,  I  lived  sound  and  untouched  from  all  profligacy 
and  vice,  having  this  thought  perpetually  before  me,  that 
though  I  might  escape  the  eyes  of  men,  I  certainly  could  not 
the  eyes  of  God." 

"  Milton  consecrated  his  thoughts  as  well  as  his  words. 
.  .  .  He  praised  everywhere  chaste  love,  piety,  gener- 
osity, heroic  force.  .  .  .  They  [the  masques]  were 
amusements  for  the  castle  ;  he  made  out  of  them  lectures  on 
magnanimity  and  constancy.  .  .  .  He  was  born  with 
the  instinct  of  noble  things." — Taine. 

Milton  was  sensuous,  as  he  declared  all  poetry  should  be,  but 
he  was  never  sensual.  His  conception  of  the  dignity  and 
the  moral  possibilities  of  poetry  is  best  expressed  in  his 
own  words  :  "  These  [poetic]  abilities,  wheresoever  they  be 
found,  are  the  inspired  gift  of  God,  rarely  bestowed,  but  yet 
to  some  (though  most  abuse)  in  every  nation  ;  and  are  of 
power  beside  the  office  of  a  pulpit,  to  imbreed  and  cherish  in 
a  great  people  the  seeds  of  virtue  and  public  civility,  to  allay 
the  perturbations  of  the  mind,  and  set  the  affections  in  right 
tune ;  to  celebrate  in  glorious  and  lofty  hymns  the  throne 
and  equipage  of  God's  almightiness,  and  what  he  works, 
and  what  he  suffers  to  be  wrought  with  high  providence 
in  his  church ;  to  sing  the  victorious  agonies  of  martyrs 
and  saints,  the  deeds  and  triumphs  of  just  and  pious  na- 
tions, doing  valiantly  through  faith  against  the  enemies  of 
Christ." 

"  Look  at  the  Lady  in  '  Comus!  '  "  exclaims  Van  Dyke  ;  she 
is  the  sweet  embodiment  of  Milton's  youthful  ideal  of  virtue, 
clothed  with  the  fairness  of  opening  womanhood,  armed  with 
the  sun-clad  power  of  chastity.  Darkness  and  danger  cannot 
stir  the  constant  mood  of  her  calm  thoughts  !  Evil  things 
have  no  power  upon  her,  but  shrink  abashed  from  her 
presence. ' ' 

"  He  had  a  gravity  in  his  temper  not  melancholy  ;  not  till 
the  later  part  of  his  life  sour,  morbid,  or  ill-tempered ;  but  a 


46  MILTON 

certain  serenity  of  mind — a  mind  not  condescending  to  little 
things. ' ' —  Walter  Bagehot. 

"  It  was  the  glory  of  Milton  to  create  for  himself  a  universe 
of  his  own  ;  and  every  line  of  his  works  shows  us  an  instance 
of  the  employment  of  ordinary  materials  in  relation  to  a  high 
internal  moral  end." — -John  Sterling. 

"The  man  was  as  great  and  pure  as  the  author." — Miss 
Mitford. 

"The  almost  passionate  praise  of  purity,  the  scorn  mani- 
fested for  those  who  indulge  in   sensual  delights  ! 
Irritable,  exacting,  vindictive,  he  was  totally  free  from  any- 
thing  deserving    the   name    of    vice ;    conscientious,    high- 
minded,  dignified,  and  courageous." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"After  the  performing  so  glorious  an  action  as  this,  you  ought 
to  do  nothing  that's  mean  and  little,  not  so  much  as  to  think  of, 
much  less  to  do,  anything  but  what  is  great  and  sublime.  .  .  . 
Show  as  much  justice,  temperance,  and  moderation  in  the  main- 
taining your  liberty  as  you  have  shown  courage  in  freeing  your- 
selves from  slavery." — Reply  to  Salmasius. 

"  Nature  and  laws  would  be  in  an  ill  case,  if  Slavery  should 
find  what  to  say  for  itself  and  Liberty  be  mute  :  and  if  tyrants 
should  find  men  to  plead  for  them,  and  they  that  can  master  and 
vanquish  tyrants  should  not  be  able  to  find  advocates." — Reply 
to  Salmasius. 

"  I  thought  it  base  that  I  should  be  travelling  abroad  for  pleasure 
while  my  fellow-countrymen  at  home  were  fighting  for  liberty." — 
From  a  Letter. 

9.  Erudition — Profound  Learning. —  This  endow- 
ment appears  continually  both  in  Milton's  prose  and  in  his 
poetry.  In  his  early  manhood  he  wrote  to  a  friend:  "I, 
who  certainly  have  not  wetted  the  tip  of  my  lips  in  the  stream 
of  these  the  classical  languages,  but  in  proportion  to  my  years 
have  swallowed  the  most  copious  draughts,  can  yet  some- 


MILTON  47 

times   retire  with   avidity  and  delight  to  feast   on    Dante, 
Petrarch,  and  many  others." 

"  His  literature  was  unquestionably  great.  He  read  all 
the  languages  which  are  considered  either  learned  or  polite ; 
Hebrew,  with  its  two  dialects ;  Latin,  Greek,  Italian,  French, 
and  Spanish.  In  Latin  his  skill  was  such  as  places  him  in  the 
first  rank  of  writers  and  critics,  and  he  appears  to  have  culti- 
vated Italian  with  uncommon  diligence." — Samuel  Johnson. 

"The  author  unfolds  the  treasures  of  his  learning  [in  the 
controversy  with  Salmasius],  heaping  up  the  testimony  of 
Scripture,  passages  from  the  fathers,  and  quotations  from  the 
poets,  laying  sacred  and  profane  antiquity  alike  under  contri- 
bution, and  subtly  discussing  the  sense  of  this  and  that 
Greek  or  Hebrew  term." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  From  the  twelfth  year  of  his  life,  Milton  tells  us  he 
rarely  went  to  bed  without  studying  until  midnight.  During 
the  five  years  at  Horton,  after  leaving  Cambridge,  he  says : 
'  I  was  wholly  intent,  through  a  period  of  absolute  leisure,  on  a 
steady  perusal  of  Greek  and  Latin  writers.  .  .  .  Occa- 
sionally I  exchanged  for  life  in  the  city,  either  for  the  purpose 
of  buying  books  or  for  that  of  learning  anything  new  in 
mathematics  or  music,  in  which  I  then  took  delight.'  " — 
H.  J.  Nicoll. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Thus  Mithridates  exprest  himself  in  a  letter  to  Arfaces, 
King  of  the  Parthians :  '  If  you  were  to  have  been  the  trum- 
peter, not  so  much  as  Homer's  mice  would  have  waged  war 
against  the  frogs.  .  .  .  You  take  care,  and  so  you  might 
well,  lest  any  should  imagine  that  you  were  about  to  bereave 
Cicero  or  Demosthenes  ;  .  .  .  but  like  a  second  Crispin,  or 
that  little  Grecian  Tzetyes,  you  do  but  write  a  great  deal,  take 
no  pains  to  write  well.  .  .  .  You  conclude  very  tragically, 
like  Ajax  in  his  raving.'  " — Reply  to  Salmasius. 

"  To  this  purpose  Josephus  writes,  a  proper  and  able  interpre- 
tator  of  the  laws  of  his  own  country,  who  was  admirably  well 
versed  in  the  Jewish  policy,  and  infinitely  preferable  to  a  thou- 


48  MILTON 

sand  obscure,  ignorant  Rabbins.  He  has  it  thus  in  the  fourth  Book 
of  his  Antiquities — '\ptaroKparia  ntv  ovv  ^paritrroi','  etc.  Another 
Jewish  author,  Philo  Judaeus,  who  was  Josephus's  contemporary, 
a  very  studious  man  in  the  Law  of  Moses,  upon  which  he  wrote 
a  large  commentary." — Reply  to  Salmasius. 

"  He  told  them  the  manner  of  their  king,  as  before  he  told  us 
the  manner  of  the  priests,  the  sons  of  Eli ;  for  he  uses  the  same 
word  in  both  places  (which  you  in  the  thirty-third  page  of  your 
book,  by  an  Hebrew  solecism,  too,  call  nisn).  •  •  •  The 
fathers  have  commented  on  this  place  too  ;  I'll  instance  in  one, 
that  may  stand  for  a  great  many  ;  and  that's  Sulpitius  Severus,  a 
contemporary  and  intimate  friend  of  St.  Jerome,  and,  in  St. 
Augustine's  opinion,  a  man  of  great  wisdom  and  learning.  .  .  . 
But  according  to  Sallust,  that  lawful  power  and  authority  that 
kings  were  intrusted  with,  .  .  .  and  you  might  have  learnt 
from  Lichardus,  that  most  of  the  Rabbins  too  were  of  the  same 
mind." — Reply  to  Salmasius. 

10.  Coarseness — Vulgarity. — "  He  used  an  intol- 
erable deal  of  bad  language,  which,  however  excusable  in  a 
heated  controversialist,  ill  became  the  author  of  '  Connis.' 
.  This  noble  argument  ['  The  Defence  of  the 
English  People  '],  alike  worthy  of  the  man  and  of  the  occa- 
sion, is  doubtless  overclouded  and  disfigured  by  personal 
abuse.  His  defences  are  rendered  provoking  by  his  extraor- 
dinary language  concerning  his  opponents;  'numskull,' 
'beast,'  'fool,'  'puppy,'  'knave,'  'ass,'  'mongrel-cur,'  are 
but  a  few  of  the  epithets  that  may  be  selected  from  this 
descriptive  catalogue." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  He  was  not  nice  in  the  choice  of  his  missiles,  and  too 

often   borrows  a  dirty  lump  from  the  dung-hill  of  Luther. 

His   sentences    are    often    loutish  and  difficult ;  in 

controversy  he  is  brutal,  and  at  any,  the  most  inopportune 

moment,  capable  of  an  incredible  coarseness." — Lowell. 

"It  is  a  more  serious  objection  that  they  [his  prose  writ- 
ings] are  disfigured  by  party  spirit,  coarse  invective,  and 
controversial  asperity.  Milton's  alleged  virulence  was  man- 


MILTON  49 

ifested  toward  both  private  and  public  foes." — W.  E. 
Channing. 

"  Milton  retorts,  .  .  .  seasoning  the  mess  with  coarse 
epigrams  and  with  vulgar  terms  of  abuse.  Luther  and  Calvin 
themselves,  experts  as  they  were  in  insults,  had  never  done  it 
better. " — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  The  natural  acerbity  of  his  temper,  quickened  by  the 
insults  of  his  assailants,  often  led  him  to  indulge  in  the  most 
vulgar  railing." — George  Dawson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  'And  I  wish,'  you  say,  'that  the  writer  had  been  burned 
as  well.'  Is  this  your  disposition,  slave  ?  But  you  have  taken 
good  care  that  I  should  not  indulge  a  similar  wish  toward  you  ; 
for  you  have  been  long  wasting  in  blacker  flames.  Your  con- 
science is  scorched  by  the  flames  of  adultery  and  rape  and  those 
perjuries  by  the  help  of  which  you  debauched  an  unsuspecting 
girl,  to  whom  you  promised  marriage  and  then  abandoned  to  de- 
spair. You  are  writhing  under  the  flames  of  that  mercenary 
passion  which  impelled  you,  though  covered  with  crimes,  to  lust 
after  the  functions  of  the  priesthood  and  to  pollute  the  conse- 
crated elements  with  your  incestuous  touch." — Second  Defence. 

"  As  for  the  queen  herself,  she  was  made  believe  that  by  put- 
ting down  bishops  her  prerogative  would  be  infringed,  of  which 
shall  be  spoken  anon  as  the  course  of  method  brings  it  in  ;  and 
why  the  prelates  labored  it  should  be  so  thought,  ask  not  them, 
but  ask  their  bellies.  .  .  .  But  he  that  will  mould  a  modern 
bishop  into  a  primitive,  must  yield  him  to  be  elected  by  the 
popular  voice,  undiocesed,  unrevenued,  unlorded,  and  leave  him 
nothing  but  brotherly  equality,  matchless  temperance,  frequent 
fasting,  incessant  prayer  and  preaching,  continual  watchings  and 
labors  in  his  ministry  ;  which  what  a  rich  booty  it  would  be, 
what  a  plump  endowment  to  the  many-benefice-gaping-mouth  of 
a  prelate,  what  a  relish  it  would  give  to  his  canary-sucking  and 
swan-eating  palate,  let  old  Bishop  Mountain  judge  for  me." 
— Reformation  in  England. 


BUNYAN,  1628-1688 

Biographical  Outline. — John  Bunyan,  born  at  Elstow, 
near  Bedford,  in  November,  1628  ;  name  spelled  Buignon, 
Buniun,  Bonyan,  Binyan,  and  in  twenty-nine  other  ways  ; 
father  a  tinker  and  mother  a  "decent  "  woman  of  the  lower 
class ;  the  family  had  a  forge  and  a  workshop  at  Elstow, 
where,  from  time  immemorial,  they  had  occupied  a  freehold  ; 
Bunyan  learns  to  read  and  write  "  according  to  the  rate  of 
other  poor  men's  children,"  but  is  early  called  from  school 
to  help  his  father,  and  soon  forgets  his  learning,  as  he  says, 
"  even  almost  utterly  ;  "  the  loss  of  his  mother,  in  June,  1644, 
and  the  prompt  advent  of  a  step-mother  estrange  him  from 
his  home  and  induce  him  to  enlist  as  a  soldier  in  the  Civil 
War,  probably  (but  not  certainly)  on  the  Parliamentary  side ; 
while  in  the  army  he  is  providentially  preserved  from  death 
by  the  sudden  and  voluntary  substitution  of  another  soldier 
in  his  place  in  a  file  drawn  to  besiege  a  certain  point,  the 
substitute  being  immediately  killed  ;  at  the  close  of  the  Civil 
War  Bunyan  is  supposed  to  have  returned  to  Elstow  and  to 
his  trade  as  tinker  or  "brasier;"  he  is  married  about  the 
end  of  1648  (he  gives  neither  the  date  of  his  marriage  nor  the 
name  of  his  wife)  to  a  woman  of  godly  parents,  but  they  have 
"  not  so  much  as  a  spoon  or  a  household  dish  between  them  ; ' ' 
his  wife's  dowry  consists  of  two  pious  books  ('  The  Plain  Man's 
Pathway  to  Heaven  '  and  '  The  Practice  of  Piety  '),  the  reading 
of  which  profoundly  affects  Bunyan  and  produces  an  external 
change  in  his  habits;  he  gives  up  dancing,  bell-ringing,  and 
profanity,  and  becomes  a  diligent  student  of  the  narrative 
parts  of  the  Bible  ;  although  "  a  brisk  talker  on  religion,"  he 

50 


BUNYAN  51 

soon  realizes  that  he  is  "a  poor  painted  hypocrite  "  and  that 
he  entirely  lacks  a  personal  knowledge  of  deep  spiritual  ex- 
periences ;  he  enters  upon  the  tremendous  spiritual  conflict 
afterward  so  graphically  described  in  his  "  Grace  Abound- 
ing; "  after  three  years  of  this  struggle  he  enters  into  pro- 
found spiritual  peace,  and  joins  a  non-conformist  body  meet 
ing  at  Bedford  under  the  ministrations  of  "  holy  Mr.  Gifford," 
who  has  much  influence  over  Bunyan  ;  Bunyan  still  resides 
at  Elstow,  where  his  blind  daughter,  Mary,  and  his  second 
daughter,  Elizabeth,  are  born  ;  he  removes  to  Bedford  about 

1655,  where,  after  the  death  of  his  wife  and  his  pastor,  Bun- 
yan, who  had  been  a  deacon,  begins  to  exhort,  at  first  pri- 
vately and  gradually  "  in  a  more  publick  way  ;  "  he  is  for- 
mally acknowledged  and  consecrated  as  a  preacher  in  1657  ; 
his  preaching  draws  great  crowds,  all  the  Midland  counties 
demanding  to  hear  him  ;  he  continues  his  trade  as  a  ' '  brasier ; ' ' 
while  a  few  churches  are  opened  to  him,  most   of  his  ser- 
mons are  delivered  "  in  woods,  in  barns,  on  village  greens, 
or  in  town  chapels;  "  he  meets  great  opposition  from   the 
established  clergy  because  of  his  effort  "  to  mend  souls  as  well 
as  kettles  and  pans  ;  "  he  is  indicted  for  preaching  in   1658 
(with  unknown  result),  is  called  "  a  witch,  a  Jesuit,  a  highway- 
man," and  is  otherwise  grossly  slandered;  publishes  his  first 
book,  "  Some  Gospel  Truths  Opened,"  at  Newport  Pagnel  in 

1656,  protesting  against  the  mysticism  of  the  Quakers  ;  he  is 
answered  by  oneBurrough,  and  replies,  in  1657,  with  "A  Vin- 
dication of  Gospel  Truths  ;  "  both  of  Bunyan's  books  show  a 
great  command  of  plain  English  and  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
the  Bible  ;  in  1658,  just  before  Cromwell's  death,  Bunyan  pub- 
lishes "  Sighs  from  Hell,  or  the  Groans  of  a  Damned  Soul," 
a  discourse  founded  on  the  parable  of  the  rich  man  and  Laz- 
arus ;  ignoring  the  revival  of  the  acts  against  non-conformists 
at  the  Restoration,  he  continues  to  preach  in  barns,  etc.  ;  he 
is  arrested  while  conducting  a  meeting  near  Bedford,  Novem- 
ber  12,  1660,   disdaining  to  improve  an  opportunity  given 


52  BUNYAN 

him  to  escape ;  he  refuses  to  promise  to  forbear  preaching, 
and  is  committed  .by  Justice  Wingate  (who  really  wished  to 
release  him)  to  the  county  jail  (not  the  town  gaol  on  the 
Ouse  Bridge,  as  has  been  commonly  believed),  where  he  re- 
mains nearly  all  the  time  for  the  ensuing  twelve  years  ;  he  is 
tried,  somewhat  irregularly  (no  witnesses  appear  against  him), 
at  Bedford  in  January,  1661;  he  confesses  the  indictment, 
and  declares  his  intention  to  repeat  his  offence  at  the  first  op- 
portunity ;  he  is  sentenced  to  three  months'  imprisonment, 
with  the  addition  of  banishment  if  he  persists  in  his  contumacy, 
and  execution  if,  after  banishment,  he  return  to  England 
without  royal  license  ;  at  the  end  of  three  months  he  is  urged 
to  agree  to  some  sort  of  a  compromise,  such  as  confining  him- 
self to  private  exhortation,  but  he  refuses  ;  refuses  also  to  take 
advantage  of  the  general  pardon  offered  on  the  coronation  of 
Charles  II.  ;  a  year  before  his  arrest  he  had  married  a  second 
wife,  who  afterward  went  to  London  and  appealed  to  the  House 
of  Lords  in  his  behalf,  but  was  referred  to  his  judges  ;  in 
the  summer  of  1661  she  appeals  three  times  to  have  Bunyan  for- 
mally tried  and  fully  heard,  but  in  vain  ;  another  vain  effort 
is  made  in  1662;  except  for  a  slight  interval  in  1666,  Bunyan 
remains  in  jail  till  1672  ;  during  the  early  years  of  his  im- 
prisonment he  is  allowed  to  leave  the  jail  frequently  and  to 
attend  religious  meetings  at  Bedford,  and  even  as  far  away  as 
London,  but  the  irregularity  is  discovered,  the  jailer  nearly  loses 
his  place  in  consequence,  and  Bunyan  is  forbidden  henceforth 
"  even  to  look  out  at  the  door  ;  "  he  is  liberated  in  1666, 
but  is  soon  rearrested  for  repeating  his  former  offence  ;  while 
in  jail  he  supports  his  family  by  making  long-tagged  laces ; 
"  nor  was  the  Word  of  God  bound,"  for  he  preached  to  his 
fellow -prisoners,  many  being  his  co-religionists  ;  he  studies 
ardently  the  Bible  and  Fox's  "  Book  of  Martyrs,"  and  writes, 
while  in  prison,  many  pamphlets  and  tracts ;  his  first  prison 
book,  called  ''Profitable  Meditations,"  is  written  in  verse, 
and  has  small  literary  merit  j  in  1663  he  publishes  "  Praying 


BUNYAN  53 

in  the  Spirit  "  and  "  Christian  Behavior  ;  "  between  1663  and 
1665  appear  "Four  Last  Things,"  "  Ebal  and  Gerizim," 
"Prison  Meditations"  (these  three  in  verse),  "The  Holy 
City,"  and  "  The  Resurrection  of  the  Dead  ;  "  he  publishes 
his  first  immortal  work,  "Grace  Abounding  to  the  Chief  of 
Sinners,"  about  the  time  of  his  brief  release  in  1666  ;  dur- 
ing the  second  period  of  his  imprisonment  he  apparently  does 
little  literary  work ;  in  1672  he  publishes  "A  Defence  of  Jus- 
tification by  Faith,"  being  an  unjustifiably  ferocious  attack 
on  a  work  then  popular  by  the  Rev.  Edward  Fowler ;  Bunyan 
publishes  also,  in  1672,  "  The  Confession  of  My  Faith  and 
Reason  of  My  Practice,"  a  vindication  of  his  course  and  an 
appeal  for  liberty;  although  "  Pilgrim  rs  Progress"  is  de- 
clared by  Bunyan  to  have  been  written  in  "the  gaol,"  re- 
cently discovered  evidence  tends  to  prove  that  it  must  have 
been  during  a  later  and  shorter  imprisonment,  about  1675, 
from  which  he  was  released  by  the  intervention  of  Thomas 
Burton,  then  Bishop  of  Lincoln ;  he  is  released  from  jail  in 
the  spring  of  1672,  and  receives,  by  royal  authority,  a  license 
to  preach,  on  May  Qth  of  that  year  and  a  formal  pardon  on 
September  1 3th  following  ;  his  release  is  due  to  a  general  plan 
of  Charles  II.  for  setting  up  the  Roman  Catholic  worship  in 
England  by  first  showing  leniency  to  all  non -conformists ;  on 
January  21,  1672,  Bunyan  is  called  to  the  pastorate  of  the 
non-conformist  congregation  at  Bedford,  which  worshipped  in 
a  barn  from  the  Restoration  till  1701  ;  he  makes  frequent 
preaching  tours  through  the  surrounding  country,  and  is  play- 
fully known  as  "  Bishop  Bunyan  ;  "  publishes  "  The  Strait 
Gate  "  in  1676  and  the  first  and  second  editions  of  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress"  in  1678;  in  1679  appears  the  third  edition  of 
"  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  both  the  second  and  the  third  contain- 
ing important  additions  to  the  first  edition ;  in  1678  he  pub- 
lishes also  "  Come  and  Welcome  to  Jesus  Christ  "  and  "  A 
Treatise  on  the  Fear  of  God  ;  "  in  1679  he  also  publishes  his 
third  great  book,  "The  Life  and  Death  of  Mr.  Badman,"  unap- 


^  54  BUNYAN 

preached  save  by  the  tales  of  Defoe  as  a  picture  of  the  rough 
English  country-town  life  under  Charles  II.  ;  in  1682  Bun- 
yan  publishes  "  The  Holy  War,"  and  between  1682  and  1684 
"  The  Barren  Fig  Tree  "  and  "  The  Pharisee  and  ,the  Pub- 
lican ;  "  the  second  part  of  "  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  appears  in 
1684  ;  with  the  renewed  enforcement  of  the  acts  against  non- 
conformists in  1675,  Bunyan's  preaching  tours  again  become 
dangerous,  but  he  abstains  from  political  disputes,  and  is  not 
disturbed;  he  preaches  frequently  in  London  to  large  congre- 
gations, but  repeatedly  refuses  tempting  offers  to  leave  his' 
Bedford  flock  for  more  attractive  fields ;  under  James  II.  he 
refuses  a  royal  offer  of  a  political  office,  made  on  condition 
that  he  take  a  personal  part  in  remodelling  the  corporation  of 
Bedford ;  Bunyan  is  unofficial  chaplain  to  the  Lord-Mayor  of 
London  at  the  time  of  his  death,  which  occurs  August  31, 
1688,  in  London,  at  the  house  of  a  friend  ;  he  is  buried  in 
Bunhill  Fields,  and  leaves  a  personal  estate  of  less  than  one 
hundred  pounds. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY    ON    BUNYAN'S    STYLE. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,   "Essays"  (Miscellaneous  Works).     New  York,  1880, 

Harper,  i:   523-535;  2:  641;  4:  25-39. 

Venables,  E.,  "Life  of  John  Bunyan."     London,  1861,  Murray,  168. 
Minto,  W.,  "English  Prose  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 

301-330. 
Taine,  H.  A.,   "History   of    English  Literature."     New  York,    1874, 

Holt,  2:  80-96. 
Cheever,  G.  B.,   "Lectures   on    Pilgrim's    Progress."     London,   1799, 

Religious  Tract  Society,  1-279. 

Lang,  A.,  "Essays  in   Little."      New  York,  1891,    Scribner,  183-192. 
Woodberry,   G.    E.,    "Studies   in  Letters."     Boston,  1891,  Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  209-219. 
Gilfillan,   G.,    "Literary  Portraits."     Edinburgh,    1852,   J.    Hogg,    i: 

3H-330;  3:  336-348. 
Hallam,    H.,    "Literature   of  Europe."      New    York,    1847,    Harper, 

2:  417. 
Masson,  D.,.  "British  Novelists."     Boston,  1892,  W.  Small,  80-85. 


BUNYAN  55 

Gosse,  E.,  "  History  of  English  Literature  of  the  Eighteenth  Century." 

New  York,  1889,  Macmillan,  82-86. 
Dawson,    G.,    "Biographical    Lectures."     London,  1886,  Kegan    Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  106-125. 
Hazlitt,  W.  C,  "Offspring  of  Thought   in   Solitude."     London,  1884, 

Reeves  &  Turner,  213-220. 
Tuckerman,    B.,    "History   of  English    Prose    Fiction."     New    York, 

1882,  Putnam,    106-111. 
Froude,   J.    A.,    "  Bunyan  "    (English    Men   of    Letters).     New    York, 

1880,  Harper,  152-165. 
Punshon,  W.  M.,  "Exeter  Hall  Lectures."     London,  1857,  Nisbet,  12: 

459-484. 

Southey,  R.,    "Cromwell  and  Bunyan."     London,  1861,  Murray,  168. 
Whittier,   J.    G.,    "Prose   Works."     Boston,    1866,    Ticknor   &    Co., 

I :   218. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 227-231. 
Tulloch,  J.,  "English  Puritanism  and  Its  Leaders."     Edinburgh,  1861, 

Blackwood,  393-488. 
Philip,  R.,   "  Life    and   Times   of    Bunyan."     London,    1839,   George 

Virtue. 
Brown,  J.,  "  Life,  Times,  and  Work  of  John  Bunyan."     Boston,  1885, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 
Anderson,  W.,    "Self-made   Men."     London,    1879,  J.   Snow  &  Co., 

65-112. 
Scott,    Sir  W.,    "Critical    and    Miscellaneous    Essays."     Philadelphia, 

1841,  Carey  &  Hart,  I  :   315-345. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1891, 

Appleton,   101-106. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "  Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  2  :  45-54. 
Whittier,  J.  G.,  "  Poetic  Works."     Boston,  1889,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  6(2);  9-37. 
Stephen,   L.  (Venables),     "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."     New 

York,  1886,  Macmillan,  7:   275-284. 
Allibone,  S.  A.,  "Dictionary  of  Authors."     Philadelphia,  1858,  Childs 

&  Peters,  i :   282-284. 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1885, 

Harper,  I  :   288-289. 
Russell,  W.  C. ,  "The  Book  of  Authors."    London,   n.  d.,  Warne,  90- 

92. 
Harper's  Magazine,  14  :   776-782  (Macaulay). 


5^  BUNYAN 

MacmiHarfs  Magazine,  30:   273-280  (A.  P.  Stanley);   39:   23-31  (Net- 

tleship) ;   28 :   238-242. 
Eclectic  Review,  23  :   318-334  (Cheever) ;   70 :   468-480  (R.  Philip) ;   95  : 

263-281  (G.  Opper);  83:    129-147  (Cheever). 
North  American  Review,  36  :   449-472  (Cheever). 
Catholic  World,  6  :   536-544. 

Dublin  University  Magazine,  37  :  435-453  (Cheever). 
National  Magazine,  6:   97-108  and  205-213. 
American  Church  Review,  16 :  337-354  (J.  Ferguson). 
Christian    Review,    4:     394-419   (R.    Philip);     19:     243-258    (V.    R. 

Hotchkiss). 
Methodist   Quarterly  Review,   9:    466-470    (Cheever);     18 :     209-227' 

(L.  A.  H.). 

Westminster  Review,  17  :    103-118  (H.  V.  Knight). 
Christian  Observer,  32  :    805-813 ;    46 :    501-509 ;    32  :    596-620   and 

668-689. 

People 's  Journal,  10  :   281-284^.  Whitehead). 
Princeton  Review,  31 :  232-257  (S.  D.  Alexander). 
Contemporary  Review,  50  :  464-480  (Goldwin  Smith). 
Congregationalist,  15  :   785-792. 
Dial,  6  :  298-299  (G.  C.  Noyes). 
Athenaum,  \  :    1886,  449-450. 

Spectator,  59  :  49-50;  60  :   439-440;  63:   840-842. 
Nation,  42  :   59-61  (Woodberry) ;  30  :  404-406  (A.  V.  Dicey). 
Academy,  29  :    1-2  (E.  Peacock). 
Saturday  Review,  62  :  63-65. 
Good  Words,  26  :   693-700  (J.  A.  Picton). 
Book  Lore,  4  :    144-145. 

Catholic  Presbyterian  ,  3  :  401-410  (D.  Sime). 
Presbyterian  Quarterly  Review,  IO:  434-461. 
Frazer's  Magazine,  31  :   308-319. 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

i.  Vigor— Terseness— Freshness. — Next  to  that 
of  the  English  Bible,  Bunyan's  language  is  the  most  terse 
and  idiomatic  to  be  found  in  our  literature.  Ninety-three 
per  cent,  of  his  vocabulary  is  Anglo-Saxon.  In  some  of 
his  pages  there  is  not  a  word  of  more  than  two  syllables. 
Punshon  speaks  of  "  his  array  of  '  picked  and  packed  '  words, 
the  clearness  with  which  he  enunciates,  and  the  power  with 


BUNYAN  57 

which  he  applies  the  truth,  his  intense  and  burning  ear- 
nestness, the  warm  soul  that  is  seen  beating  in  benevolent 
heart-throbs,  through  the  transparent  page. ' '  He  has  the  rare 
faculty  of  using  no  unnecessary  words.  "  In  Bunyan's  pict- 
ures, ' '  says  Venables,  ' '  there  is  never  a  superfluous  detail. 
Every  stroke  tells,  and  helps  to  the  completeness  of  the  por- 
traiture."  His  diction  bears  plainly  the  marks  of  the  few 
books  that  he  knew,  and  knew  so  well.  His  constant  compan- 
ions were  the  Bible  and  Fox's  "  Book  of  Martyrs,"  and  every 
page  shows  the  impress  of  one  or  the  other  of  these  books. 
Southey  calls  Bunyan's  diction  "  a  pure  stream  of  current  Eng- 
lish." Hallam  calls  him  "powerful  and  picturesque  from 
concise  simplicity."  "Under  his  simplicity,"  says  Taine, 
"  you  will  find  power,  and  in  his  puerility,  intuition."  Ma- 
caulay  says,  of  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress  :  " 

"  There  is  no  book  in  our  literature  on  which  we  would  so 
readily  stake  the  fame  of  the  unpolluted  English  language,  no 
book  which  shows  so  well  how  rich  that  language  is  in  its 
own  proper  wealth  and  how  little  it  has  been  improved  by 
all  that  it  has  borrowed.  His  knowledge  of  the  Bible  was 
such  that  he  might  have  been  called  a  living  concordance." 

"  Never  was  the  inward  life  of  any  being  depicted  with 
more  vehement  and  burning  language.  It  ['  Grace  Abound- 
ing ']  is  an  intensely  vivid  description  of  the  workings  of  a 
mind  of  the  keenest  sensibility  and  the  most  fervid  imagina- 
tion. .  .  .  It  is  condensed,  severe,  and  naked  in  its 
style,  beneath  the  pent  fire  of  Bunyan's  feelings  and  the 
pressure  of  his  conscience,  forbidding  him  to  seek  for  beauty." 
— G.  B.  Cheever. 

"  His  characters  come  as  fresh,  as  vivid,  as  if  they  were  out 
of  Scott  or  Moliere  ;  the  tinker  is  as  great  a  master  of  charac- 
ter and  fiction  as  the  greatest,  almost." — Andrew  Lang. 

"  The  pent-up  fire  glows  in  every  line,  and  kindles  the 
hearts  of  his  readers.  Beautiful  images,  vivid  expressions, 
forcible  arguments  all  aglow  with  passion,  tender  pleadings, 


58  BUNYAN 

solemn  warnings,  make  those  who  read  him  all  eye,  all  ear, 
all  soul.  .  ...  He  did  not  set  himself  to  compose  theo- 
logical treatises  upon  stated  subjects,  but  after  he  had  preached 
with  satisfaction  to  himself  and  acceptance  to  his  audience,  he 
usually  wrote  out  the  substance  of  his  discourse  from  memory, 
with  the  enlargements  and  additions  it  might  seem  to  require. 
And  thus  his  religious  works  have  all  the  glow  and  fervor  of 
the  unwritten  utterances  of  a  practised  orator." — E.  Venables. 

"  The  thing  which  gave  Bunyan  notoriety  in  the  days  of 
his  ungodliness  was  the  energy  which  he  put  into  all  his  do- 
ings. .  .  .  Though  there  is  a  great  appearance  of  ampli- 
tude about  his  compositions,  few  of  his  words  could  be  want- 
ed." — -James  Hamilton. 

"  Nothing,  as  a  rule,  is  colder  than  the  characters  in  an 
allegory  ;  his  are  living" — Tainc. 

"  More  earnest  words  were  never  written  [speaking  of 
'  Grace  Abounding  '].  It  is  the  entire  unveiling  of  a  human 
heart — the  tearing  off  of  the  fig-leaf  covering  of  sin." — }Vhit- 
ticr. 

"  Read  not  Addison  nor  Johnson,  read  Bunyan,  who  em- 
ployed direct  and  true  English.  .  .  .  The  man  who 
would  speak  good  English  should  take  for  his  company  the 
authorized  version  of  the  Bible  and  Bunyan's  '  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress.' Bunyan's  is  chapel  English,  man's  English,  woman's 
English,  the  English  spoken  anywhere  by  the  native  sons  and 
daughters  of  the  soil." — George  Dawson. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  They  then  began  to  pick  holes,  as  we  say,  in  the  coats  of 
some  of  the  godly,  and  with  that  devilishness  that  they  may  have 
a  seeming  colour  to  throw  religion  (for  the  sake  of  some  infirmities 
they  have  espied  in  them)  behind  their  backs." — Grace  Abound- 
ing. 

"  His  house  is  as  empty  of  religion  as  the  white  of  an  egg  is  of 


BUNYAN  59 

savour.  There  is  there  neither  prayer  nor  sign  of  repentance  ; 
yea,  the  brute  in  his  kind  serves  God  far  better  than  he.  He  is 
the  very  stain,  reproach,  and  shame  of  religion,  to  all  that  know 
him  ;  it  can  hardly  have  a  good  word  in  all  that  end  of  the  town 
where  he  dwells,  through  him.  '  A  saint  abroad,  and  a  devil  at 
home.'  His  poor  family  finds  it  so  ;  he  is  such  a  churl,  such  a 
railer  at  and  so  unreasonable  with  his  servants,  that  they  neither 
know  how  to  do  for  or  speak  to  him.  Men  that  have  any  deal- 
ings with  him  say  it  is  better  to  deal  with  a  Turk  than  with  him, 
for  fairer  dealing  they  shall  have  at  their  hands.  This  Talkative, 
if  it  be  possible,  will  go  beyond  them,  defraud,  beguile,  and  over- 
reach them." — Pilgrim's  Progress. 

"  How  many  steps  have  I  took  in  vain  !  Thus  it  happened  to 
Israel,  for  their  sin  ;  they  were  sent  back  again  by  way  of  the 
Red  Sea  ;  and  I  am  made  to  tread  those  steps  with  sorrow  which 
I  might  have  trod  with  delight,  had  it  not  been  for  this  sinful 
sleep.  How  far  might  I  have  been  on  my  way  by  this  time  !  I 
am  made  to  tread  those  steps  thrice  over  which  I  needed  not  to 
have  trod  but  once  ;  yea,  now  also  I  am  like  to  be  benighted, 
for  the  day  is  almost  spent.  Oh,  that  I  had  not  slept ! " — Pil- 
grim's Progress. 


2.  Imaginative  Power— Portraiture.— W.  M.  Pun- 

shon  calls  his  imagination  ' '  princely,  almost  beyond  compare. ' ' 
Every  object,  every  character  is  brought  before  the  reader 
with  wonderful  vividness.  "  Abstract  qualities  of  charac- 
ter," says  Froude,  "  were  never  clothed  in  more  substantial 
flesh  and  blood  than  Bunyan's  jurymen."  Bunyan  pos- 
sessed in  a  remarkable  degree  the  power  of  graphic  represen- 
tation. Says  Taine  :  ' '  He  transforms  arguments  into  para- 
bles. .  .  .  Giant  Despair,  a  simple  abstraction,  becomes 
as  real  in  his  hands  as  an  English  gaoler  or  farmer. 
Powerful  as  that  of  an  artist,  but  more  vehement,  this  imag- 
ination worked  in  the  man  without  his  co-operation,  and  be- 
sieged him  with  visions  which  he  had  neither  willed  nor  fore- 
seen. .  .  .  He  has  no  trouble  in  calling  up  or  forming 
imaginary  objects.  They  agree  in  all  their  details  with  all 


60  BUNYAN 

the  details  of  the  precept  which  they  represent,  as  a  pliant 
veil  fits  the  body  which  it  covers.  He  distinguishes  and  ar- 
ranges all  the  parts  of  the  landscape — here  the  river,  on  the 
right  the  castle,  a  flag  on  its  left  turret,  the  setting  sun  three 
feet  lower,  an  oval  cloud  in  the  front  part  of  the  sky — with 
the  preciseness  of  a  carpenter. ' ' 

"  He  was  a  lad  to  whom  nature  had  given  a  powerful 
imagination  and  sensibility  which  amounted  to  a  disease. 
.  .  .  Images  came  crowding  on  his  mind  faster  than  he 
could  put  them  into  words  ;  quagmires  and  pits,  steep  hills', 
dark  and  horrible  glens,  soft  vales,  and  sunny  pastures.  .  .  . 
To  the  last  he  loved  to  draw  his  illustrations  of  sacred  things 
from  camps  and  fortresses,  from  guns,  drums,  trumpets,  flags 
of  truce,  and  regiments  arrayed,  each  under  its  own  banner." 
Macaulay. 

"  Bunyan's  imagination  was  powerful  enough,  in  connec- 
tion with  his  belief  in  God's  superintending  Providence,  to 
array  his  inward  trials  with  a  sensible  shape  and  external 
events  with  a  light  reflected  from  his  own  experience ;  hopes 
and  fears  were  friends  and  enemies  ;  acting  in  concert  with 
these,  all  things  that  he  met  with  in  the  world  were  friends 
and  enemies  likewise,  according  as  they  aided  or  opposed  his 
spiritual  life."— G.  B.  Cheever. 

"  He  had  to  render  into  outward  and  visible  forms  the 
subtle  and  strong  passions  of  individual  and  internal  life. 
.  .  .  He  has  taken  the  hidden  things  of  the  interior  life 
and  put  them  into  words  as  an  artist  puts  them  upon  canvas ; 
and  there  are  no  better  pictures." — George  Dawson. 

"Bunyan  combined  the  power  of  expressing  thoughts  of 
universal  acceptability  in  a  style  of  the  most  perfect  clearness, 
with  a  high  degree  of  imaginative  genius  and  a  vivid  descrip- 
tive faculty ;  his  works  are  equally  attractive  to  readers  of  all 
ages  and  every  variety  of  mental  culture ;  they  are  among 
the  first  to  be  taken  up  in  the  nursery  and  among  the  last  to 
be  laid  down  when  life  is  closing  in  on  us  ;  they  have  filled  the 


BUNYAN  6l 

memory  with  pictures  and  peopled  it  with  the  most  unfor- 
gettable reality.  .  .  .  Nor  is  there  one  [of  his  works] 
which  does  not  here  and  there  exhibit  specimens  of  Bunyan's 
picturesque  and  imaginative  power.  In  nothing  is  his  vivid- 
ness more  displayed  than  in  the  reality  of  his  impersonations. 
The  dramatis  persona  are  not  shadowy  abstractions,  moving 
far  above  us  in  a  mystical  world  or  lay  figures  ticketed  with 
certain  names,  but  solid  men  and  women  of  our  own  flesh  and 
blood,  living  in  our  own  every-day  world,  men  of  like  passions 
with  ourselves.  Many  of  them  we  know  familiarly ;  there  is 
hardly  one  we  should  be  surprised  to  meet  any  day." — E. 
Venables. 

"  His  imagination  [after  conversion]  ceased  its  childish 
fabling,  and  became  visionary ;  he  saw  mind-pictures,  and 
this  the  more  readily  because  his  uneducated  mind  was  accus- 
tomed to  move  through  concrete  ideas,  and  was  characterized 
by  a  high  visualizing  power." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"It  ['  Pilgrim's  Progress  ']  is  the  matchless  and  inimitable 
crystallization  into  imaginative  art  of  the  whole  system  of  Puri- 
tan Protestantism." — Edmund  Gosse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  took  me,  and  had  me  where  he  showed  me  a  stately  pal- 
ace, and  how  the  people  were  clad  in  gold  that  were  in  it ;  and 
how  there  came  a  venturous  man,  and  cut  his  way  thro*  the 
armed  men  that  stood  in  the  door  to  keep  him  out  ;  and  how  he 
was  bid  to  come  in  and  win  eternal  glory." — Grace  Abounding. 

"  Now  there  was,  not  far  from  the  place  where  they  lay,  a 
castle  called  Doubting  Castle,  the  owner  whereof  was  Giant 
Despair  ;  and  it  was  in  his  grounds  they  now  were  sleeping. 
Wherefore  he,  getting  up  in  the  morning  early  and  walking  up 
and  down  in  his  fields,  caught  Christian  and  Hopeful  asleep  in 
his  grounds.  Then,  with  a  grim  and  surly  voice,  he  bid  them 
awake,  and  asked  them  whence  they  were  and  what  they  did  on 
his  grounds.  They  told  him  they  were  pilgrims  and  that  they 
had  lost  their  way.  Then,  said  the  giant,  '  You  have  this  night 


62  BUNYAN 

trespassed  on  me,  by  trampling  in  and  lying  on  my  grounds  ;  and 
therefore  you  must  go  along  with  me."  So  they  were  forced  to 
go,  because  he  was  stronger  than  they.  They  also  had  but 
little  to  say,  for  they  knew  themselves  in  a  fault.  The  Giant, 
therefore,  drove  them  before  him  and  put  them  into  his  castle,  in- 
to a  very  dark  dungeon,  nasty  and  stinking  to  the  spirits  of  these 
two  men.  Here,  then,  they  lay  from  Wednesday  morning  till 
Saturday  night,  without  one  bit  of  bread  or  drop  of  drink  or 
light  or  any  to  ask  how  they  did." — Pilgrim's  Progress. 

"  So  he  went  on  and  Apollyon  met  him  ;  now  the  monster  was 
hideous  to  behold.  He  was  clothed  with  scales  like  a  fish  (and 
they  are  his  pride),  he  had  wings  like  a  dragon,  feet  like  a  bear, 
and  out  of  his  belly  came  fire  and  smoke,  and  his  mouth  was  as 
the  mouth  of  a  lion." — Pilgrim's  Progress. 

''Then  went  the  jury  out,  whose  names  were  Mr.  Blindman, 
Mr.  No-good,  Mr.  Malice,  Mr.  Love-lust,  Mr.  Live-loose,  Mr. 
Heady,  Mr.  High-mind,  Mr.  Enmity,  Mr.  Liar,  Mr.  Cruelty,  Mr. 
Hate-light,  and  Mr.  Implacable,  who  every  one  gave  in  his  pri- 
vate verdict  against  him  among  themselves,  and  afterward  unan- 
imously concluded  to  bring  him  in  guilty  before  the  Judge.  And 
first  among  themselves,  Mr.  Blindman,  the  foreman,  said,  '  I  see 
clearly  that  this  man  is  a  heretic.'  Then  said  Mr.  No-good, 
'Away  with  such  a  fellow  from  the  earth!'  '  Ay,' said  Mr. 
Malice,  'for  I  hate  the  very  look  of  him.'  Then  said  Mr.  Love- 
lust,  '  I  could  never  endure  him.'  '  Nor  I,'  said  Mr.  Live-loose, 
'  for  he  would  always  be  condemning  my  way.'  '  Hang  him, 
hang  him!'  said  Mr.  Heady.  'A  sorry ,' said  Mr.  High- 
mind.  '  My  heart  riseth  against  him,' said  Mr.  Enmity.  'He 
is  a  rogue,'  said  Mr.  Liar.  '  Hanging  is  too  good  for  him,'  said 
Mr.  Cruelty.  '  Let  us  dispatch  him  out  of  the  way,'  said  Mr. 
Hatelight.  Then  said  Mr.  Implacable,  '  Might  I  have  all  the 
world  given  to  me,  I  could  not  be  reconciled  to  him  ;  there- 
fore let  us  forthwith  bring  him  in  guilty  of  death.' " — Pilgrim's 
Progress. 

3.  Homeliness— Naturalness.— This  means  some- 
thing more  than  simplicity.  He  abounds  in  homely  collo- 
quialisms. Minto  declares  that  Bunyan's  language  "  is 
homely  indeed,  but  it  is  not  the  every-day  speech  of  hinds 


BUNYAN  63 

and  tinkers ;  it  is  the  language  of  the  Church,  of  the  Bible, 
of  Fox's  '  Book  of  Martyrs,'  and  whatever  other  literature 
Bunyan  was  in  the  habit  of  perusing."  It  is  this  plainness  of 
style  that  has  caused  "  Pilgrim's  Progress"  to  be  translated 
into  more  languages  than  any  other  English  book ;  while,  for 
two  hundred  years,  the  Bible  excepted,  it  has  been  the  most 
widely  read  book  in  our  literature. 

"  His  English  is  plain  but  never  vulgar,  homely  but  never 
coarse,  and  still  less  unclean ;  full  of  imagery  but  never 
obscure,  always  intelligible,  always  forcible,  going  straight  to 
the  point  in  the  fewest  and  simplest  words.  It  may  indeed 
be  affirmed  that  it  was  impossible  for  Bunyan  to  write  badly. 
His  genius  was  a  native  genius.  As  soon  as  he  began  to 
write  at  all  he  wrote  well.  Without  any  training,  as  he  says, 
in  the  school  of  Aristotle  or  Plato,  or  any  study  of  the  great 
masters  of  literature,  at  one  bound  he  leapt  to  a  high  level  of 
thought  and  composition.  His  earliest  book,  '  Some  Gos- 
pel Truths  Opened,'  'thrown  off,'  writes  Dr.  Brown,  'at  a 
heat,'  displays  the  same  ease  of  style  and  directness  of  speech 
and  absence  of  stilted  phraseology  which  he  maintained  to 
the  end.  The  great  charm  which  pervades  all  Bunyan's 
writings  is  their  naturalness.  You  never  feel  that  he  is  writ- 
ing for  effect,  still  less  to  perform  an  uncongenial  piece  of 
task-work.  He  writes  because  he  had  something  to  say 
which  was  worth  saying,  a  message  to  deliver  on  which  the 
highest  interests  of  others  were  at  stake,  which  demanded 
nothing  more  than  a  straightforward  earnestness  and  plainness 
of  speech,  such  as,  coming  from  the  heart,  might  best  reach 
the  hearts  of  others.  He  wrote  as  he  spoke,  because  a  neces- 
sity was  laid  upon  him  which  he  dared  not  evade." — Ven- 
ables. 

' '  The  vocabulary  is  the  vocabulary  of  the  common  people. 
There  is  not  an  expression,  if  we  except  a  few  technical  terms 
of  theology,  which  would  puzzle  the  rudest  peasant.  We 
have  observed  several  pages  which  do  not  contain  a  single 


64  BUNYAN 

word   of  more  than  two  syllables.     Yet    no  writer  has  said 
more  exactly  what  he  meant." — Macaulay, 

"  Shorn  of  all  ornament,  simple  and  direct  as  the  contrition 
and  prayer  of  childhood,  .  .  .  the  style  [of  '  Grace 
Abounding ']  is  that  of  a  man  dead  to  self-gratification  and 
only  desirous  to  convey  to  others  the  lesson  of  his  inward 
trials,  temptations,  sins,  weaknesses,  and  dangers."-  —  Whittier. 

"These  repetitions,  embarrassed  phrases,  familiar  compari- 
sons, this  artless  style,  whose  awkwardness  recalls  the  child- 
ish periods  of  Herodotus,  and  whose  simplicity  recalls  tales 
for  children,  prove  that  if  his  work  is  allegorical,  it  is  so  in 
order  that  it  may  be  intelligible,  and  that  Bunyan  is  a  poet 
because  he  is  a  child." — Taine. 

"  His  is  a  homespun  style,  not  a  manufactured  one. 
If  it  is  not  a  well  of  English  undefiled  to  which  the  poet  and 
philologist  must  repair,  .  .  .  it  is  a  clear  stream  of  cur- 
rent English,  the  vernacular  speech  of  his  age,  sometimes,  in- 
deed, in  its  rusticity  and  coarseness,  but  always  in  its  plain- 
ness. .  .  .  His  language  is  everywhere  level  to  the  most 
ignorant  reader  and  to  the  meanest  capacity  ;  there  is  a 
homely  reality  about  it ;  a  nursery  tale  is  not  more  intelligi- 
ble, in  its  manner  of  narration,  to  a  child." — Robert  Sort  they. 

"  It  ['  Pilgrim's  Progress ']  is  composed  in  the  lowest  style 
of  English,  without  slang  or  false  grammar.  If  you  were  to 
polish  it,  you  would  at  once  destroy  the  reality  of  the  vision." 
— Coleridge. 

"This  book  ['  Pilgrim's  Progress  ']  is  written  so  plainly, 
simply,  and  true  to  nature,  that  a  sentence  means  almost  a 
volume,  and  we  find  ourselves  quoting  from  it  constantly  as 
we  do  from  Shakespeare.  .  .  .  They  [his  pictures]  are 
homely,  you  say.  So  much  the  better.  And  what  realism 
there  is  about  them  !  There  are  so  many  characters  in  the 
book  that  those  whom  he  addresses  are  pretty  sure  to  find 
themselves  in  it." — George  Dawson. 


BUNYAN  6$ 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

' '  Then  Apollyon  straddled  quite  over  the  whole  breadth  of  the 
way,  and  said,  '  I  am  void  of  fear  in  this  matter  ;  prepare  thyself 
to  die  ;  for  I  swear  by  my  infernal  den  that  thou  shall  go  no  fur- 
ther ;  here  will  I  spill  thy  soul  : '  and  with  that  he  threw  a  flaming 
dart  at  his  breast ;  but  Christian  had  a  shield  in  his  hand  with 
which  he  caught  it,  and  so  prevented  the  danger  of  that.  Then 
did  Christian  draw,  for  he  saw  it  was  time  to  bestir  him  ;  and 
Apollyon  as  fast  made  at  him,  throwing  darts  as  thick  as  hail." — 
Pilgrim's  Progress. 

11  Why,  they,  after  their  headstrong  manner,  conclude  that  it 
is  a  duty  to  rush  on  their  journey  all  weathers  ;  and  I  am  for 
waiting  for  wind  and  tide.  They  are  for  hazarding  all  for  God 
at  a  clap  ;  and  I  am  taking  all  advantages  to  secure  my  life  and 
estate." — Pilgrim's  Progress. 

"  Will  a  man  give  a  penny  to  fill  his  belly  with  straw  ?  or  can 
you  persuade  the  turtle-dove  to  live  on  carrion,  like  the  crow  ? 
Though  faithless  ones  care  for  carnal  lusts,  pawn  or  mortgage,  or 
sell  what  they  have  and  themselves  outright  to  boot." — Grace 
Abounding. 

4.  Quiet  Humor— Latent  Satire. —  "We  have 
strokes  of  pleasantry  which  bring  back  the  smile  to  our  faces 
and  humorous  thrusts  about  Hopeful's  courage  when  the 
thieves  were  at  a  distance,  and  at  the  way  in  which  '  Peter 
would  swagger,  aye,  he  would,  but  who  so  foiled  and  run 
down  by  villains  as  he  ? '  " — John  Brown. 

"The  open-heartedness,  humor,  and  deep  sensibility  of 
Christian's  character  make  us  love  him.  ...  It  is 
amusing  to  see  the  manner  in  which,  by  turns,  their  [Bunyan's 
personages]  real  character  is  expressed  in  Bunyan's  honest, 
rugged,  plain-dealing,  and  humorous  way." — Sir  Walter 
Scott. 

"The  man  must  have  been  not  a  little  waggish  as  well 
as  witty  who  invented  such  happy  names  for  the  judge  and 
jury  that  tried  and  burnt  Faithful  at  Vanity  Fair.  .  .  . 


66  BUNYAN 

Many  of  the  characters  of  his  '  Holy  War '  also,  as  well  as 
the  manoeuvres  of  it,  are  rich  in  masterly  strokes  of  shrewd- 
ness and  piquancy.  His  coinage,  like  Fuller's  or  Donne's, 
'  rings  like  good  metal.'  .  .  .  The  '  Holy  War '  abounds 
with  sparkling  wit  as  well  as  with  profound  metaphysics.  It 
is,  altogether,  '  a  witty  invention,'  which  verifies  the  proverb, 
that  '  Wisdom  dwells  with  Prudence.'  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  this  wit  is  of  the  highest  order ;  and  the  more  remark- 
able, inasmuch  as  it  is  struck  out  from  abstract  qualities  and 
personified  passions." — Robert  Philip. 

"  He  can,  by  the  quiet  touch  of  sarcasm,  wither  up  a  pom- 
pous pretender,  tear  off  the  mantle  of  a  hypocrite,  expose  a 
fool,  and  blast  an  impostor.  ...  He  is  at  times  dan- 
gerous in  the  cool  naivete  of  his  satire." — George  Gilfillan. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  like  you  wonderful  well,  for  your  sayings  are  full  of  convic- 
tion ;  and  I  will  add,  what  thing  is  so  pleasant  and  what  so  profita- 
ble as  to  talk  of  the  things  of  God  ?  What  things  so  pleasant  (that 
is,  if  a  man  hath  any  delight  in  things  that  are  wonderful)  ?  For 
instance,  if  a  man  doth  delight  of  the  history  or  the  mystery  of 
things  ;  or  if  a  man  doth  delight  to  talk  of  miracles,  wonders,  or 
signs,  where  shall  he  find  things  recorded  so  delightful  and  so 
sweetly  penned  as  in  the  Holy  Scripture  ?  .  .  .  What  you 
will  :  I  will  talk  of  things  heavenly  or  things  earthly  ;  things 
sacred  or  things  profane  ;  things  past  or  things  to  come  ;  things 
foreign  or  things  at  home  ;  things  more  essential  or  things 
circumstantial  ;  provided  that  all  will  be  done  to  our  profit. "- 
Pilgrim's  Progress. 

ff  Yes,  and  my  wife  is  a  very  virtuous  woman  ;  the  daughter  of 
a  virtuous  woman  :  she  was  my  Lady  Feigning's  daughter,  there- 
fore she  came  of  a  very  honorable  family,  and  is  arrived  to  such 
a  pitch  of  breeding  that  she  knows  how  to  carry  it  to  all,  even  to 
prince  and  peasant.  It  is  true  we  somewhat  differ  in  religion 
from  those  of  the  stricter  sort,  yet  but  in  two  small  points  :  we 
never  strive  against  wind  or  tide  ;  secondly,  we  are  always  most 
zealous  when  religion  goes  in  his  silver  slippers  :  we  love  to  walk 


BUNYAN  67 

with  him  in  the  streets  if  the  sun  shines  and  the  people  applaud 
him." — Pilgrim's  Progress. 

"  But  will  it  not  be  counted  a  trespass  against  the  Lord  of  the 
city  whither  we  are  bound,  thus  to  violate  his  revealed  will  ? 
They  told  him  that,  as  for  that,  he  needed  not  to  trouble  his  head 
thereabout ;  for  what  they  did  they  had  custom  for,  and  could 
produce,  if  need  were,  testimony  that  would  witness  it  for  more 
than  a  thousand  years.  '  But,'  said  Christian,  'will  your  practice 
stand  a  trial  at  law  ? '  They  told  him  that,  '  custom,  it  being  of 
so  long  a  standing  as  above  a  thousand  years,  would  doubtless 
now  be  admitted  as  a  thing  legal  by  any  impartial  judge  ;  and 
besides,'  said  they,  'so  be  we  get  into  the  way,  what's  matter 
which  way  we  get  in  ?  If  we  are  in,  we  are  in.' " — Pilgrim's 
Progress. 


5.  Realism. — "Bunyan  always  preached  'what  he  saw 
and  felt. "...  How  he  preached  when  himself  amidst 
the  terrors  of  his  own  '  Pilgrim  '  in  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow 
of  Death,  may  be  gathered  from  his  own  mouth. 
He  acted  always  under  one  character,  the  Christian  Soldier, 
realizing  in  his  own  conflicts  and  conquests  the  Progress  of 
his  own  Pilgrim.  Therefore  his  great  work  is  not  a  book  of 
imaginations  and  shadows  but  of  realities  experienced.  .  . 
It  will  be  pleasing  to  the  imagination  just  in  proportion  as 
the  mind  of  the  reader  has  been  accustomed  to  interpret  the 
things  of  this  life  by  their  connection  with  another  and  by 
the  light  which  comes  from  that  world  to  this.  A  reader 
without  this  habit,  and  never  having  felt  that  he  is  a  stranger 
and  a  pilgrim  in  a  world  of  temptations  and  snares,  can  see  but 
half  the  beauty  of  such  poetry  as  fills  this  work,  because  it 
cannot  make  its  appeal  to  his  own  experience.  ...  Of 
the  faithfulness  with  which  Bunyan  has  depicted  the  inward 
trials  of  the  Christian  conflict,  of  the  depth  and  power  of  the 
appeal  which  that  book  makes  to  the  Christian's  heart,  of  the 
accuracy  and  beauty  of  the  map  therein  drawn  of  the  deal- 
ings of  God's  spirit  in  leading  the  sinner  from  the  City  of 


68  BUNYAN 

Destruction  to  Mount  Zion,  he  knows  and  can  conceive  noth- 
ing."— G.  B.   Cheever. 

"  This  is  the  highest  miracle  of  genius — that  things  which 
are  not  should  be  as  though  they  were ;  that  the  imaginations 
of  one  mind  should    become  the   personal    recollections   of 
another.     .     .     .     Bunyan    is   almost  the   only  writer  that 
ever  gave  to  the  abstract  the  interest  of  the  concrete. 
His  imagination  exercised  despotic  power  over  his  body  and 
mind.     .     .     .     He  felt  his  infernal  enemy  pulling  at  his 
clothes  behind  him.     He  spurned  with  his  feet  and  struck- 
with  his  hands  at  the  destroyer." — Macau/ay. 

"How  close,  how  truthful  to  his  surroundings,  he  was  as 
a  literary  workman,  is  brought  home  with  great  force  by  the 
view  which  this  biography  ['  Pilgrim's  Progress  ']  gives  of  Bed- 
ford things  and  people." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  The  '  Pilgrim's  Progress  '  is  a  study,  unsurpassed  for  faith- 
fulness of  detail  and  large  suggestiveness,  of  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  epochs  in  any  land.  It  is  no  mere  realistic  sketch 
of  the  Bedford  of  Puritan  times  ;  it  is  a  masterly  and  brilliant 
picture  of  the  people  of  Puritan  England  and  of  the  moral 
and  ideal  forces  in  the  air.  Christian,  Faithful,  and  Mr. 
Greatheart ;  Pliable,  Obstinate,  and  Talkative ;  Mr.  Saveall, 
Mr.  Moneylove,  and  Mr.  Byends  were,  doubtless,  but  decent, 
'  douce  '  folks  from  Bedford  ;  .  .  .  but  they  were  immedi- 
ately recognized  in  every  parish  in  the  country.  .  .  .  The 
character,  the  spirit,  and  the  tendencies  of  the  time  are  all 
here.  .  .  .  The  earnestness  of  the  times,  the  narrowness, 
the  piety,  the  superstitions,  and  the  excesses — religious  and 
irreligious — are  all  here.  The  fragment  is  simply  invaluable. 
No  ancient  statue,  no  shield  or  stone  weapon,  and  no  fossil, 
plant,  fish,  or  foot-mark  ever  gave  so  real  and  so  rich  a  glimpse 
of  its  times  as  this  fantastic  dream.  .  .  .  It  is  more  than 
a  mere  likeness,  and  for  this  reason  is  of  more  than  special  in- 
terest to  the  student  of  history.  He  sees  in  the  little  sketch 
far  more  than  mere  villagers  and  pietists  ;  for  he  sees,  in  these 


BUNYAN  69 

villagers  and  pietists,  the  impulse  that  made  Puritanism  great. 

.  .  The  characters  are  drawn  with  the  firmest  fidelity  to 
truth — so  much  so  that  we  may  predicate  with  assurance  what 
they  will  think,  feel,  will,  or  even  what  they  will  do,  under 
given  circumstances. ' ' — David  Simc. 

"  He  places  before  his  readers  certain  pictures  which  he 
himself  saw  almost  as  clearly  as  if  he  had  been  Christian  trudg- 
ing upon  a  real  highway,  instead  of  Bunyan  writing  within 
dark  prison  walls.  And  this  he  has  done  with  such  marvel- 
lous skill  that  we,  too,  feel  the  green  grass  of  the  Delectable 
Mountains  beneath  our  feet  and  shudder  as  the  awful  darkness 
of  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  closes  around  us." — 
W.  F.  Collier. 

"  The  more  we  study  the  'Pilgrim's  Progress'  and  the 
'  Holy  War,'  in  connection  with  his  own  history  and  times, 
the  more  shall  we  see  reason  to  believe  that  his  numerous 
characters  directly  and  broadly  reflect  both  the  outer  and  in- 
ner characteristics  of  the  religious  world  familiar  to  him. 
.  .  There  is  also  everywhere,  in  his  allegories,  the  evi- 
dence of  a  rare  power  of  actual  observation  of  sharp  insight 
into  the  living  characteristics  around  him,  and  of  great  fulness 
of  artistic  skill  in  drawing  these  from  the  life  as  he  knew  and 
saw  them.  ...  It  is,  above  all,  this  realistic  element 
that  gives  to  Bunyan's  great  allegory  its  special  interest.  It 
is  because  he  draws  so  much  from  outward  fact  that  we  find 
his  pages  so  living — and  linger  over  them,  and  return  to  them 
— and  find  them  not  only  instructive,  but  entertaining.  Spen- 
ser in  his  great  allegory  is  richer,  .  .  .  but  he  has  nowhere 
caught  life  and  mirrored  it  as  Bunyan  has  done.  .  .  .  Puri- 
tanism lives  in  his  pages — spiritually  and  socially — in  forms 
and  in  coloring  which  must  ever  command  the  sympathy  and 
enlist  the  love  of  all  good  Christians." — John  Tulloch. 

"  A  man  so  sensitive  to  supernatural  impressions  could  re- 
alize them  as  completely  as  the  actual  experiences  of  his  daily 
life.  .  .  .  The  same  impression  of  reality  pervades  the 


7O  BUNYAN 

whole  book  ['  Pilgrim's  Progress ']....  Every  person- 
age whom  he  meets  on  his  journey  and  every  place  through 
which  he  passes,  appears  to  the  mind  of  the  reader  with  the 
vividness  of  actual  experience.  The  child  or  the  laborer  reads 
the  '  Pilgrim's  Progress  '  as  a  record  of  adventures  undergone 
by  a  living  man  ;  the  scholar  forgets  the  art  which  has  raised 
the  picture  before  his  mind  in  a  sense  of  contact  with  the  sub- 
ject portrayed.  .  .  .  Other  allegorists  have  pleased  the 
fancy  or  gratified  the  understanding,  but  Bunyan  occupies  at 
once  the  imagination,  the  reason,  and  the  heart  of  his  reader. 
In  '  Pilgrim's  Progress  '  strange  and  unreal  places 
become  well-known  places,  and  moral  qualities  become  dis- 
tinct human  beings." — Bayard  Tuckerman. 

' '  He  was  one  of  those  enthusiasts  whom  some  call  fanatics 
and  some  madmen ;  who  hear  suggestions,  as  they  believe, 
from  visible,  tangible  forms  about  their  beds,  and  to  whom  it 
is  in  vain  to  say  that  they  do  not  see  them,  for  they  verily 
and  firmly  believe  that  they  do.  ...  Such  a  process  is 
like  catching  a  cloud  and  making  it  permanent,  or  like  turn- 
ing a  thought  into  a  thing.  But  John  Bunyan  has  done  it." 
—  George  Daw  son. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  have  also  another  stratagem  in  my  head  :  you  knosv  Man- 
soul  is  a  market-town,  a  town  that  delights  in  commerce  ;  what, 
therefore,  if  some  of  our  Diabolonians  shall  feign  themselves  far 
countrymen,  and  shall  go  out  and  bring  to  the  market  of  Man- 
soul  some  of  our  wares,  though  it  be  but  for  half  the  worth  ? 
Now  let  those  that  thus  trade  in  their  market  be  those  that  are 
true  to  us,  and  I  will  lay  down  my  crown  to  pawn  it  will  do. 
There  are  two  that  are  come  to  my  thoughts  already,  that  I  think 
will  be  arch  at  this  work,  and  they  are,  Mr.  Penny-wise-pound- 
foolish  and  Mr.  Get-i'-th'-hundred-and-lose-i-th'-shire ;  nor  is 
this  man  with  the  long  name  at  all  inferior  to  the  other." — The 
Holy  War. 

11  I  saw  then  in  my  dream  that  they  went  on  in  this  their  soli- 


BUNYAN  71 

tary  ground,  till  they  came  to  a  place  at  which  a  man  is  apt  to 
lose  his  way.  Now  though  when  it  was  light  their  guide  could 
well  enough  tell  how  to  miss  those  ways  that  led  wrong,  yet  in 
the  dark  he  was  put  to  a  stand  ;  but  he  had  in  his  pocket  a  map 
of  all  ways  leading  to  or  from  the  Celestial  City  ;  wherefore  he 
struck  a  light,  for  he  never  goes,  also,  without  his  tinder-box, 
and  takes  a  view  of  his  book  or  map,  which  bids  him  be  care- 
ful, in  that  place,  to  turn  to  the  right-hand  way." — Pilgrim's 
Progress. 

"  It  made  me  laugh  to  see  how  old  Mr.  Prejudice  was  kicked 
and  tumbled  about  in  the  dirt  :  for  though  a  while  since  he  was 
made  a  captain  of  the  Diabolonians,  to  the  hurt  and  damage  of  the 
town,  yet  now  they  had  got  him  under  their  feet ;  and  I'll  assure 
you  he  had  by  some  of  my  Lord  Understanding's  party  his 
crown  cracked  to  boot.  Mr.  Anything  also  became  a  brisk  man 
in  the  broil  ;  but  both  sides  were  against  him,  because  he  was 
true  to  none.  Yet  he  had  for  his  malpertness  one  of  his  legs 
broken  ;  and  he  that  did  it  wished  it  had  been  his  neck.  Much 
harm  more  was  done  on  both  sides  :  but  this  must  not  be  forgot- 
ten. It  was  now  a  wonder  to  see  my  Lord  Will-be-will  so  indif- 
ferent as  he  was  ;  he  did  not  seem  to  take  one  side  more  than 
another,  only  it  was  perceived  that  he  smiled  to  see  how  old 
Prejudice  was  tumbled  up  and  down  in  the  dirt  ;  also  when  Cap- 
tain Anything  came  halting  up  before  him,  he  seemed  to  take  but 
little  notice  of  him." — The  Holy  War. 

6.  Catholicity — Common  Sense. —  "His  common 
sense  ...  is  extraordinarily  close-packed  and  hard,  and 
exhibits  acute  observation  of  the  ways  of  human  nature  in 
practical  life.  .  .  .  In  an  age  of  sectaries,  he  was  not  a 
narrow  bigot,  and  did  not  stickle  for  meaningless  things ; 
and  in  the  time  of  political  strife  growing  out  of  religious 
differences,  and  though  himself  a  sufferer  by  twelve  years' 
experience  in  prison,  he  did  not  confuse  heaven  with  any 
fantastic  monarchy  or  commonwealth  of  Christ,  nor  show  any 
rancor  or  revengeful  spirit  as  a  subject." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  You  cannot  say  from  a  perusal  of  that  work  ['Pilgrim's 
Progress  ']  whether  its  author  was  a  Presbyterian 


72  BUNYAN 

or  a  Lutheran,  only  that  he  did  not  mean,  in  drawing  his  own 
portrait  of  a  true  Christian,  that  he  should  belong  to  any  of 
these  parties  exclusively.  .  .  .  The  portraiture  was  a 
compound  of  what  was  excellent  in  them  all.  .  .  .  You 
do  not  meet  truth  in  fragments,  or  in  parts,  but  for  the  whole. 
You  do  not  meet  prejudices,  bigotries,  reproaches,  nor  any- 
thing in  the  sweet  fields  through  which  he  leads  you  that  can 
repel  any — the  humblest,  most  forgotten  Christian,  or  the 
wisest,  most  exalted  one — from  these  lovely  enclosures; 
.  .  .  conversing  with  you  all  the  way  so  lovingly,  so  in- 
structively, so  frankly,  that  nothing  can  be  more  delightful. 
You  have  in  him  more  of  the  ubiquity,  unity,  and  harmony 
of  divine  truth,  more  of  the  pervading  breath  and  stamp  of 
inspiration,  than  in  almost  any  other  uninspired  writer. 
.  In  him  there  was  a  remarkable  translucence  of  the 
general  in  the  particular,  and  of  the  particular  through  the 
general.  .  .  .  Bunyan's  book  has  the  likeness  of  this 
universality,  and  Christians  of  every  sect  may  take  what  they 
please  out  of  it,  except  their  own  sectarianism  ;  they  cannot 
find  that.  In  this  respect  it  bears  remarkably  the  divine 
stamp.  .  .  .  It  is  a  work  so  full  of  native  good  sense 
that  no  mind  can  read  it  without  gaining  in  wisdom  and 
vigor  of  judgment.  .  .  .  It  is  the  charm  of  common 
sense  and  reality  that  constitutes  in  great  measure  the  charm 
of  Bunyan's  book." — G.  B.  Cheever. 

"The  'Pilgrim's  Progress'  is  entirely  catholic — that  is, 
universal  in  its  expression  and  in  its  thoughts.  It  may  con- 
tain sentiments  distasteful  to  this  or  to  that  section  of  Chris- 
tians— may  tinge  of  the  Calvinist  or  of  the  Puritan  ;  but 
what  is  remarkable  is  that  this  peculiar  color  is  so  slight." — 
A.  P.  Stanley. 

"John  Bunyan  doubtless  owed  to  John  Gifford  the 
peculiar  type  of  his  Christianity,  its  comprehensiveness,  its 
sect-forgetting  zeal  for  the  things  of  Jesus  Christ." — James 
Hamilton. 


BUNYAN  73 

"John  Bunyan  dipped  his  pen  in  the  Catholicism  of  Cath- 
olicity. He  had  no  sympathy  with  any  ism,  however  novel 
or  specious  or  popular,  which  corrupted  or  darkened  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  Gospel.  With  him  charity  was  not  a  mere 
clap-trap  sentiment  for  the  platform,  but  a  deep  conviction,  a 
strong  principle,  a  fruit  of  the  Holy  Spirit." — W.  Anderson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  saw  then  in  my  dream  so  far  as  this  valley  reached  there 
was  on  the  right  hand  a  very  deep  ditch  ;  that  ditch  is  it  into 
which  the  blind  have  led  the  blind  in  all  ages,  and  have  both 
there  miserably  perished.  Again,  behold,  on  the  left  hand,  there 
was  a  very  dangerous  quag,  into  which,  if  even  a  good  man  falls, 
he  can  find  no  bottom  for  his  feet  to  stand  on.  Into  that  quag 
King  David  once  did  fall,  and  had  no  doubt  therein  been  smoth- 
ered, had  not  He  that  is  able  plucked  him  out."— Pilgrim's 
Progress. 

"  Now  I  began  to  consider  with  myself  that  God  hath  a  bigger 
mouth  to  speak  with  than  I  had  a  heart  to  conceive  with ;  I 
thought  also  with  myself  that  He  spoke  not  his  words  in  haste  or 
in  an  unadvised  heat,  but  with  infinite  wisdom  and  judgment  and 
in  very  truth  and  faithfulness." — Grace  Abounding. 

"  The  Publican  hath  now  new  things,  great  things,  and  life-long 
things  to  concern  himself  about  :  his  sins,  the  curse,  with  death 
and  hell,  began  now  to  stare  him  in  the  face  :  wherefore  it  was 
no  time  now  to  let  his  heart  or  his  eyes  or  his  cogitations  wander, 
but  to  be  fixed,  and  to  be  vehemently  applying  himself  as  a  sin- 
ner to  the  God  of  Heaven  for  mercy." — The  Pharisee  and  the 
Publican. 

"  My  sons,  you  have  heard,  in  the  words  of  the  truth  of  the 
Gospel,  that  you  must  '  through  many  tribulations  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  ;  '  and  again,  that  '  in  every  city  bonds  and 
afflictions  await  you  ;  '  and  therefore  you  cannot  expect  that  you 
should  go  long  on  your  pilgrimage  without  them  in  some  sort  or 
other.  You  have  found  something  of  the  truth  of  these  testimo- 
nies upon  you  already,  and  more  will  immediately  follow  ;  for 
now,  as  you  see,  you  are  almost  out  of  this  wilderness,  and  there- 
fore you  will  soon  come  into  a  town  that  you  will  by  and  by  see 


74  BUNYAN 

before  you ;  and  iu  that  town  you  will  be  hardly  beset  with  ene- 
mies, who  will  strain  hard  but  they  will  kill  you  ;  and  be  sure 
that  one  or  both  of  ypu  must  seal  the  testimony  which  you  hold 
with  your  blood  ;  but  be  you  faithful  unto  death,  and  the  King 
will  give  you  a  crown  of  life.  He  that  shall  die  there,  although 
his  death  will  be  unnatural,  and  his  pain,  perhaps,  great,  he  will 
yet  have  the  better  of  his  fellows  ;  not  only  because  he  will  be 
arrived  at  the  Celestial  City  soonest,  but  because  he  will  escape 
many  miseries  that  the  other  will  meet  with  the  rest  of  the  jour- 
ney. But  when  you  are  come  to  the  town,  and  shall  find  ful- 
filled what  I  have  here  related,  then  remember  your  friend,  and 
quit  yourselves  like  men,  and  commit  the  keeping  of  your  souls 
to  God  in  well-doing,  as  unto  a  faithful  creator." — Pilgrim's 
Progress. 


7.  Biblical  Coloring  —  Spirituality.— "His  genius 
pursued  a  path  dictated  by  his  piety,  and  one  that  no  other 
being  in  the  world  ever  pursued  before  him.  .  .  .  The 
very  discipline  of  his  intellect  was  a  spiritual  discipline ;  the 
conflicts  that  his  soul  sustained  with  the  powers  of  darkness 
were  the  very  sources  of  his  intellectual  strength. 
The  light  that  first  broke  through  his  darkness  was  the  light 
from  Heaven.  .  .  .  Bunyan  has  given  a  powerful  rela- 
tion of  his  own  religious  experience  in  a  little  work  entitled, 
'  Grace  Abounding  to  the  Chief  of  Sinners.'  .  .  .  Not 
only  was  his  heart  made  new  by  the  spirit  of  the  Bible,  but 
his  whole  intellectual  being  was  penetrated  and  transfigured 
by  its  influence.  .  .  .  The  spirit  of  his  work  is  Hebrew  : 
we  may  trace  the  mingled  influence  of  David  and  of  Isaiah  in 
the  character  of  his  genius  ;  and  as  to  the  images  of  the  sacred 
poets,  he  is  lavish  in  the  use  of  them  in  the  most  natural  and 
unconscious  manner  possible ;  his  mind  was  imbued  with 
them." — G.  B.  Cheever. 

"There  is  scarce  a  circumstance  or  metaphor  in  the  Old 
Testament  which  does  not  find  a  place,  bodily  and  literally,  in 
the  story  of  the  '  Pilgrim's  Progress  ; '  and  this  peculiar  arti- 


BUNYAN  75 

fice  has  made  his  own  imagination  appear  more  creative  than 
it  really  is." — Hallam. 

"  The  '  Pilgrim's  Progress  '  is  not  only  one  of  the  first  and 
most  beautiful  English  offsprings  of  the  Scriptures,  but  it  is  so 
like  them  in  style,  language,  imagery,  and  sustained  fervor 
that  it  might  be  taken  as  an  appendix  to  the  Bible.  The  tale 
so  glows  from  beginning  to  end  with  Eastern  imagery  and  fer- 
vor of  prophets  and  seers  that  it  may  be  viewed  as  an  English 
flower  grown  upon  Jewish  soil.  .  .  .  It  is  so  full  of  their 
sublime  images  that  it  comes  upon  the  reader  as  an  apocalypse 
of  the  Apocalypse.  ...  To  the  glad,  pious  ears  of  the 
Pilgrim  the  very  birds,  when  they  sing  sweetly,  sing  aloud 
the  Psalms  of  David." — David  Sime. 

"  It  was  only  its  relation  to  religion  that  made  any  aspect 
of  life  interesting  to  him.  .  .  .  Bunyan  knew  no  liter- 
ature except  that  of  the  Bible  ;  his  imagination  fed  itself  upon 
its  grand  forms  of  expression — its  wondrous  scenes.  His  alle- 
gories are  found  constructed  upon  such  great  outlines  of  im- 
aginative incident  and  scenery  as  he  had  there  learned  to 
admire.  All  critics  have  been  struck  with  the  simplicity  and 
faithfulness  with  which  he  reproduced  scriptural  circumstance 
and  idea.  .  .  .  Nature  is  beheld  by  him  only  in  the  light 
of  the  sacred  page  and  delineated  by  him  only  in  the  light  of 
its  descriptive  language." — John  Tulloch. 

"It  is  the  English  of  the  Bible.  His  images  are  images 
of  prophet  and  evangelist.  So  completely  had  the  Bible  be- 
come Bunyan's  life  that  one  feels  its  phrases  as  the  natural  ex- 
pression of  his  thoughts.  He  lived  in  the  Bible  till  its  words 
became  his  own. ' '—/.  R.  Green. 

"  Bunyan  had  occasion  to  mention  an  entertainment.  Every 
dish  which  he  placed  on  the  table  is  in  itself  a  scriptural 
parable ;  and  the  precise  nature  of  the  refreshment  .  .  . 
is  found,  on  referring  to  the  texts  indicated,  to  have  an  ex- 
plicit connection  with  some  striking  particular  of  the  Holy 
Wri t. "  —Sir  Walter  Scott. 


76  BUN VAN 

"  '  Pilgrim's  Progress'  seems  to  be  a  complete  reflection  of 
scripture  with  none  of  the  rubbish  of  the  theologians  mixed  up 
with  it." — Thomas  Arnold. 

"  '  Pilgrim's  Progress  '  has  been  called  '  the  creed  of  Cal- 
vin, illustrated  by  the  genius  of  Shakespeare. '  ' 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  at  last  I  began  to  consider,  that  *  that  which  is  highly 
esteemed  among  men,  is  had  in  abomination  with  God.'  And  I 
thought  again,  this  shame  tells  me  what  men  are  ;  but  he  tells 
me  nothing  what  God  or  the  Word  of  God  is  ;  and  I  thought, 
moreover,  that  at  the  day  of  doom  we  shall  not  be  doomed  to 
death  or  life  according  to  the  hectoring  spirits  of  the  world,  but 
according  to  the  wisdom  and  law  of  the  Highest.  Therefore, 
thought  I,  what  God  says  is  best,  indeed  is  best,  though  all  the 
men  in  the  world  are  against  it." — Pilgrim's  Progress. 

"  Then  said  my  lord  mayor,  '  We  have  sinned  indeed,  but  that 
shall  be  no  help  to  thee,  for  our  Immanuel  hath  said  it,  and  that 
in  great  faithfulness,  '  and  him  that  cometh  to  me  I  will  in  no 
wise  cast  out.'  He  hath  also  told  us  (O  our  enemy)  that  '  all 
manner  of  sin  and  blasphemy  shall  be  forgiven  to  the  sons 
of  men.'  Therefore  we  dare  not  despair,  but  will  look  for  and 
wait  for  mercy." — The  Holy  War. 

"  Look  to  the  heavens,  and  behold  and  consider  the  stars,  how 
high  are  they  !  Can  you  stop  the  sun  from  running  his  course, 
and  hinder  the  moon  from  giving  her  light  ?  Can  you  count  the 
number  of  the  stars,  or  stop  the  bottles  of  heaven  ?  Can  you 
call  for  the  waters  of  the  sea,  and  cause  them  to  cover  the  face 
of  the  ground  ?  Can  you  behold  everyone  that  is  proud  and 
abase  him  and  bend  their  faces  in  secret  ?  Yet  these  are  some  of 
the  works  of  our  King,  in  whose  name,  this  day,  we  come  up  un- 
to you,  that  you  may  be  brought  under  his  authority.  In  his 
name,  therefore,  I  summon  you  again  to  yield  up  yourselves  to 
his  captains."—  The  Holy  War. 

8.  Sympathy — Tenderness. — "  Religion  has  scarcely 
ever  worn  a  form  so  calm  and  soothing  as  in  his  allegory. 
The  feeling  which  predominates  throughout  the  book  is  a 


BUNYAN  77 

feeling  of  tenderness  for  weak,  timid,  and  harassed  minds. 
The  character  of  Mr.  Fearing,  of  Mr.  Feeblemind,  and  Mr. 
Despondency  and  his  daughter  Miss  Muchafraid  ;  the  account 
of  poor  Littlefaith,  who  was  robbed  by  three  thieves  of  his  spend- 
ing money  ;  the  description  of  Christian's  terrorin  thedungeon 
of  Giant  Despair  and  in  his  passage  through  the  river — all 
show  how  strong  a  sympathy  Bunyan  felt,  after  his  own  mind 
had  become  clear  and  cheerful,  for  persons  afflicted  with 
religious  melancholy. ' ' — Macaulay. 

"  He  had  in  himself  all  these  ingredients  of  full-formed 
humanity.  .  .  .  How  sorry  he  is  for  Mr.  Badman  ! 
and  how  he  makes  you  sympathize  with  Christian  and  Mr. 
Ready-to-halt  and  Mr.  Feeblemind  !  .  .  .  *  In  his  ser- 
mons how  piteously  he  pleads  with  sinners  for  their  own  souls! 
And  how  expressive  is  the  undisguised  vehemency  of  his 
yearning  affections  !  " — -James  Hamilton. 

"Throughout  the  'Pilgrim's  Progress'  are  evidences  of 
strong  human  sympathy  and  a  kindly  indulgence  for  the 
weak  and  erring  among  his  fellow-men.  .  .  .  Bunyan 
himself  was  distinguished  by  a  general  sympathy  with  his 
fellow-men  which  the  narrowness  of  Puritanism  had  failed  to 
impair." — Bayard  Tuckerman. 

"  That  man  knew  his  Bible  well,  and  he  knew  that  other 
book  well — the  human  heart." — George  Dawson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  If,  therefore,  any  of  them  should  at  any  time  be  sick  or  weak, 
and  so  not  able  to  perform  that  office  of  love,  which,  with  all 
their  hearts  they  are  willing  to  do  (and  will  do  also  when 
well  and  in  health),  slight  them  not,  nor  despise  them,  but 
rather  strengthen  them,  and  encourage  them,  though  weak  and 
ready  to  die,  for  they  are  your  fence  and  your  guard,  your  wall, 
your  gate,  your  locks,  and  your  bars.  And  although,  when  they 
are  weak,  they  can  do  but  little,  but  rather  need  to  be  helped  by 
you  than  that  you  should  then  expect  great  things  from  them, 
yet,  when  well,  you  know  what  exploits,  what  feats  and  warlike 


78  BUNYAN 

achievements  they  are  able  to  do  and  will  perform  for  you." — 
The  Holy  War.  • 

"Now,  when  he  had  heard  me  make  my  complaint,  he 
said,  '  Peace  be  to  thee.'  He  also  wiped  mine  eyes  with 
his  handkerchief,  and  clad  me  in  silver  and  gold.  He  put  a 
chain  about  my  neck,  and  ear-rings  in  mine  ears,  and  a  beauti- 
ful crown  upon  my  head.  Then  he  took  me  by  the  hand,  and 
said,  'Mercy,  come  after  me.'  So  he  went  up,  and  I  followed, 
till  we  came  at  a  golden  gate.  Then  he  knocked  ;  and  when  they 
within  had  opened,  the  man  went  in,  and  I  followed  him  up  to  a 
throne,  upon  which  one  sat,  and  he  said  to  me,  '  Welcome, 
daughter." — Pilgrim's  Progress.  , 

"  But  alas  !  who  knows  the  many  straits,  and  as  I  may  say, 
the  stress  of  weather  (I  mean  the  cold  blasts  of  hell)  with  which 
the  poor  soul  is  assaulted  betwixt  its  receiving  of  grace  and  its 
sensible  closing  with  Jesus  Christ  ?  None,  I  dare  say,  but  it  and 
its  fellows.  .  .  .  Oh,  what  mists,  what  mountains,  what 
clouds,  what  darkness,  what  objections,  what  false  apprehensions 
of  God,  of  Christ,  of  grace,  of  the  Word,  and  of  the  soul's  con- 
dition, doth  Satan  now  lay  before  it,  and  haunt  it  with  ;  whereby 
he  dejecteth,  casteth  down,  daunteth,  distresseth,  and  almost 
driveth  it  into  despair  !" — The  Pharisee  and  the  Publican. 


9.  Dramatic  Instinct. —  "Its  ['Pilgrim's  Progress'] 
dramatic  power  is  wonderful.  Every  character  is  distinct 
and  real.  Every  person  introduced  is  a  man  or  a  woman  and 
not  a  shadow,  an  abstraction  to  which  names  are  given. 
.  .  .  His  persons  all  have  human  hearts,  and  the  red 
blood  of  life  flows  through  their  veins,  and  they  talk  and  feel 
and  slip  and  get  on,  even  as  the  people  we  meet." — Lang- 
ford. 

"  In  the  works  of  many  celebrated  authors  men  are  merely 
personifications.  .  .  .  The  mind  of  Bunyan,  on  the  con- 
trary, was  so  imaginative  that  personifications  became  men. 
A  dialogue  between  two  qualities  in  his  dream  has  more  dra- 
matic effect  than  a  dialogue  between  two  human  beings  in 
most  plays. ' '  — Ma  can  lav. 


BUNYAN  79 

"  Its  ['  Pilgrim's  Progress  ']  dramatic  skill  is  of  the  highest 
order.  The  characters  are  never  confused,  inconsistent,  or 
mechanical.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  vivid,  life-like,  and 
always  full  of  supreme  interest.  So  intensely  dramatic  is  the 
work  that  probably  only  its  religious  character  has  prevented 
it  from  long  ago  having  been  put  upon  the  stage.  But,  in 
point  of  fact,  it  requires  no  stage  to  bring  out  its  dramatic 
effects.  Even  the  tiny  boy  with  the  book  before  him  can 
construct  such  a  stage  for  himself.  .  .  .  For  sheer, 
strong,  human  interest,  it  stands  only  beside  the  very  best 
dramas  and  romances  in  our  language." — David Sime. 

"  The  'Pilgrim's  Progress  '  is  marked  by  a  dramatic  unity 
not  always  possessed  by  even  greater  books.  .  .  .  The 
unity  of  the  story  is  kept  up  from  point  to  point. 
The  episodes  by  the  way  never  draw  us  so  far  aside  that  we 
forget  the  main  story,  but  rather  contribute  to  its  effect. 
Bunyan's  characters  never  linger,  never  tire  us.  As 
soon  as  they  step  on  to  the  scene  we  feel  their  personality  so 
vividly  that  we  are  sure  that  we  should  know  them  again. 
They  proceed  at  once  to  instruct  or  amuse  or  interest,  having 
done  which  they  disappear,  leaving  us  regretful  they  have  van- 
ished so  soon.  ...  By  a  few  strokes  only,  sometimes  by 
the  mere  giving  of  a  name,  an  abstraction  rises  up  clothed  in 
flesh  and  blood." — -John  Brown. 

"  Honest  John  Bunyan  is  the  first  man  I  know  of  who  has 
mingled  narrative  and  dialogue  together ;  a  mode  of  writing 
very  engaging  to  the  reader,  who,  in  the  most  interesting 
passages,  finds  himself  admitted  as  it  were  to  the  company 
and  present  at  the  conversation." — Benjamin  Franklin, 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  captains,  therefore,  being  fled  into  the  castle,  the 
enemy,  without  much  resistance,  possess  themselves  of  the  rest 
of  the  town,  and  spreading  themselves  as  they  went  into  every 
corner,  they  cried  out  as  they  marched,  according  to  the  com- 


80  BUNYAN 

mand  of  the  tyrant,  '  Hell-fire  !  Hell-fire  !  Hell-fire  ! '  so  that 
nothing  for  a  while  throughout  the  town  of  Mansoul  could  be 
heard  but  the  direful  noise  of  '  Hell-fire  ! '  together  with  the  roar- 
ing of  Diabolus's  drum.  And  now  did  the  clouds  hang  black  over 
Mansoul,  nor  to  reason  did  anything  but  ruin  seem  to  attend  it." 
—  The  Holy  War. 

"  One  thing  I  would  not  let  slip  ;  I  took  notice  that  now  poor 
Christian  was  so  confounded  that  he  did  not  know  his  own  voice. 
And  thus  I  perceived  it  :  just  when  he  was  come  over  against 
the  mouth  of  the  burning  pit,  one  of  the  wicked  ones  got  behind 
him,  and  slept  up  softly  to  him,  and  whisperingly  suggested  many 
grievous  blasphemies  to  him,  which  he  verily  thought  had  pro- 
ceeded from  his  own  mind." — Pilgrim's  Progress. 

10.  Conscious  Inspiration  — Earnestness.  —  "In 

recommending  his  own  religious  experience  to  the  readers 
of  his  romance,  Bunyan  was  impressed  with  a  sense  of  the 
sacred  importance  of  the  task  for  which  he  had  lived  through 
poverty  and  captivity.  .  .  .  To  gain  the  favor  of 
Charles  and  all  his  court  he  would  not,  we  are  confident, 
have  guided  Christian  one  step  off  the  straight  and  narrow 
path.  "—Sir  Walter  Stott. 

"  Not  more  abandoned  to  the  power  of  supernatural  influ- 
ence was  Ezekiel  .  .  .  than  was  the  tinker  of  Elstow 
when  following  the  footsteps  of  Christian  in  that  immortal 
pilgrimage,  or  when  beleaguering  Mansoul  with  those  multitu- 
dinous hosts  of  darkness." — George  Gilfillan. 

"  To  attempt  this  [stepping  into  a  higher  style]  would  be, 
to  one  of  his  intense  earnestness,  to  degrade  his  calling.  He 
dared  not  do  it.  .  .  .  God  had  not  played  with  him,  and 
he  dared  not  play  with  others.  His  errand  was  much  too 
serious,  and  their  need  and  danger  too  urgent  to  waste  time 
in  tricking  out  his  words  with  human  skill.  .  .  .  Every 
sentence  breathes  the  most  tremendous  earnestness. 
It  is  just  this,  which,  with  all  their  rudeness,  their  occasional 
bad  grammar,  and  their  homely  colloquialisms,  gives  to 
Bunyan's  writings  the  power  of  riveting  the  attention  and 


BUNYAN  8l 

stirring  the  affections  which  few  authors  have  attained  to." — 
E.  Venables. 

"It  ['  Pilgrim's  Progress  ']  has  the  one  supreme  quality  of 
all  true  inspiration,  that  it  is  not  so  much  the  man  taking  pos- 
session, deliberately,  of  the  subject,  as  it  is  the  subject  coming 
down  and  bearing  away  the  man." — -John  Brown. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  dared  not,  when  I  came  before  the  Lord,  go  off  my  knees 
until  I  had  entreated  him  for  help  and  mercy  against  the  tempta- 
tions that  are  to  come  ;  and  I  beseech  thee,  reader,  that  thou 
learn  to  beware  of  my  negligence  by  the  afflictions  that  for  this 
thing  I  did  for  days  and  months  and  years  with  sorrow  undergo." 
—  Grace  Abounding. 

"  Whoso  believes  and  understands  it  cannot  live  without  con- 
fession of  sin  and  a  coming  to  him  for  mercy.  .  .  .  The 
terror  of  the  Lord,  how  will  it  appear,  when  his  wrath  shall  burn 
and  flame  out  like  an  oven  or  a  fiery  furnace  before  him,  while 
the  wicked  stand  in  his  sight !  .  .  Who  can  conceive  this 

terror  !  much  more  unable  are  men  to  express  it  with  tongue  or 
pen  ;  yet  the  truly  penitent  and  sin-confessing  publican  hath  ap- 
prehension so  far  thereof  by  the  word  of  the  testimony  that  it 
driveth  him  to  God  with  a  confession  of  sin  for  an  interest 
in  God's  mercy." — The  Pharisee  and  the  Publican. 

"  That  which  made  me  fear  was  this  :  lest  Christ  should  have 
no  liking  to  me,  for  he  called  whom  he  would.  But  oh  !  the 
glory  that  I  saw  in  that  condition  did  still  so  engage  my  heart 
that  I  could  seldom  read  of  any  that  Christ  did  call  but  I  pres- 
ently wished,  '  Would  I  had  been  in  their  clothes,  would  I  had 
been  born  Peter  ;  would  I  had  been  born  John  ;  or,  would  I  had 
been  by  and  had  heard  him  when  he  called  them,  how  would  I 
have  cried,  O  Lord,  call  me  also  !  But  oh !  I  feared  he  would 
not  call  me.'  " — Grace  Abounding. 


ADDISON,  1672-1719 

Biographical  Outline. — Joseph  Addison,  born  May  i. 
1672,  at  Milston,  near  Amesbury,  Wilts  ;  father  a  clergyman, 
afterward  Dean  of  Lichfield  ;  Addison  attends  school,  succes- 
sively, at  Amesbury,  Salisbury,  Lichfield,  and  the  Charter- 
house; forms  a  life-friendship  with  Steele  at  the  Charterhouse  ; 
in  1687  he  enters  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  where  his  classical 
attainments  attract  attention,  and  soon  gain  for  him  a  demy- 
ship  (a  half- fellowship)  at  Magdalen  College;  he  takes  A.M. 
in  1693,  gains  a  probationary  fellowship  in  1697  and  in  1698 
a  regular  fellowship,  which  he  holds  till  1711  ;  takes  sev- 
eral pupils,  and  rapidly  acquires  a  reputation  for  elegant 
scholarship,  especially  in  Latin  poetry,  in  which  he  excels  all 
Englishmen  except  Milton  and  Buchanan ;  among  the  sub- 
jects of  his  Latin  poems  are  the  Peace  of  Ryswick,  an  altar- 
piece  of  the  Resurrection  at  Magdalen,  a  description  of  the 
bowling  green,  a  barometer,  a  puppet-show,  addresses  to  Dr. 
Hannes  and  Dr.  Burnet,  of  the  Charterhouse,  and  a  mock- 
heroic  war  between  the  cranes  and  the  pygmies,  in  which 
Swift's  Lilliputians  are  foreshadowed ;  Addison's  literary 
reputation  reaches  London,  and  he  writes  a  congratulatory 
poetical  address  to  Dryden,  which  Dryden  inserts  in  the  third 
part  of  his  "  Miscellany  Poems,"  published  in  1693  ;  to  the 
fourth  part  of  Dryden's  "  Miscellany,"  published  in  1694, 
Addison  contributes  a  translation  of  parts  of  Virgil's  Fourth 
Georgic  and  a  didactic  account  of  "The  Greatest  English 
Poets;"  in  1697  he  contributes  an  anonymous  essay  on  the 
Georgics  to  Dryden's  translation  of  Virgil,  and  in  a  postscript 
to  his  "  ^Eneis  "  Dryden  refers  to  him  as  "  the  ingenious  Mr. 
Addison,  of  Oxford  ;  "  Addison  at  one  time  intended  to  take 

82 


ADDISON  83 

holy  orders,  but  was  deterred  (Tickell  says)  by  his  diffidence  ; 
he  engages  to  make  a  translation  of  Herodotus  ;  is  introduced 
to  Charles  Montague  (later  Earl  of  Halifax)  by  Congreve,  of 
whom  Montague  (then  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer)  was  al- 
ready a  patron;  in  1695  Addison  publishes  a  poem  to  the 
king,  with  a  dedicatory  address  to  Lord  Somers,  both  ex- 
pressing orthodox  conservative  political  opinions;  in  1697  he 
publishes  his  Latin  poem  on  the  Peace  of  Ryswick,  with  a 
dedication  to  Montague,  who  obtains  for  Addison,  through 
Somers,  a  pension  of  ^300  a  year,  and  declares  that  he  will 
keep  him  out  of  the  Church ;  the  alleged  object  of  the  pension 
was  to  enable  Addison  to  qualify  himself  for  diplomatic  em- 
ployment ;  he  leaves  England  in  the  autumn  of  1699,  visits 
Paris,  and  settles  in  Blois,  where  he  lives  for  a  year  in  great 
seclusion,  assiduously  mastering  the  French  language ;  he  re- 
turns to  Paris  in  1700,  and  converses  with  Malebranche  and 
Boileau  ;  Boileau  is  impressed  with  Addison's  Latin  scholar- 
ship and  exerts  a  strong  influence  on  him  thereafter ;  Addison 
leaves  France  in  December,  1700,  for  a  tour  through  Italy; 
he  visits  Genoa,  Milan,  Venice,  San  Marino,  Rome,  Naples,  and 
Capri  ;  spends  the  early  autumn  of  1701  in  Rome,  and  reaches 
Geneva  in  November,  going  via  Florence  and  Mont  Cenis  ; 
throughout  his  tour  he  studies  the  scenery  of  Italy  as  illus 
trating  the  writings  of  Virgil,  Juvenal,  Ovid,  Manlius,  and 
Seneca;  in  a  "Letter  from  Italy"  addressed  to  Halifax,  he 
expresses  himself  forcibly  against  fabled  Christian  antiquities,  : 
popery,  and  tyrannical  political  power;  while  at  Geneva  he-'- 
learns  of  Halifax's  expulsion  from  office,  of  the  death  of  Will- 
iam III.,  and  of  the  consequent  loss  of  his  pension,  which  had 
then  been  paid  but  one  year,  so  that  he  is  left  with  only  his 
Oxford  fellowship  for  support ;  he  remains  on  the  Continent 
till  September,  1703,  spending  the  summer  of  1702  in  Vienna, 
where  he  writes  his  dialogues  on  "  Medals;  "  later  he  visits 
Hamburg  and  Holland  ;  Swift's  assertion  that,  while  abroad, 
Addison  became  "  travelling  tutor  to  a  squire  "  is  not  corrob- 


84  ADDISON 

orated,  as  he  refused  to  become  tutor  to  the  son  of  the  Duke 
of  Somerset  because  he  considered  a  salary  of  one  hundred 
guineas  a  year,  with  expenses,  insufficient  pay  ;  returning  to 
London  in  the  autumn  of  1703,  he  remains  for  a  year  without 
employment ;  continues  his  intimacy  with  prominent  Whigs, 
and  becomes  a  member  of  the  famous  Kitcat  Club;  after  the 
battle  of  Blenheim,  in  August,  1704,  Godolphin  seeks  a  poet 
to  commemorate  the  English  victory  ;  Halifax  suggests  Add  i- 
son,  who  is  found  in  poor  lodgings  and  who  is  made  Commis- 
sioner of  Appeals  as  a  retainer  for  his  services  in  writing  the 
poem  ;  he  writes  "  The  Campaign,"  and  is  rewarded  by  be- 
ing made  Under  Secretary  of  State,  in  1706,  an  office  that  he 
retains,  though  under  different  superiors,  till  1709,  when  he 
becomes  secretary  to  Wharton,  then  just  made  Lord-Lieutenant 
of  Ireland ;  Addison  is  made  also  Keeper  of  the  Records,  at  a 
salary  of  ^400  a  year  ;  while  holding  these  political  offices 
he  published  (1705)  "Remarks  on  Several  Parts  of  Italy" 
(which  became  very  popular  and  was  republished  in  1718) 
and  "Fair  Rosamond,"  an  opera  in  three  acts,  published 
anonymously  (1707),  which  failed  at  first,  but  afterward  suc- 
ceeded when  set  to  new  music  by  Arne  ;  during  this  period 
Addison  also  aided  Steele  in  writing  his  play  "  The  Tender 
Husband,"  and  formed  a  close  friendship  with  Swift,  whom  he 
calls,  in  1705,  "  the  most  agreeable  companion,  the  truest 
friend,  and  the  greatest  genius  of  his  age  ;  "  Addison  spends 
much  of  his  time  at  Will's  and  later  at  Button's  Coffee  House, 
with  Pope,  Tickell,  Davenant,  Ambrose  Phillips,  and  other 
literary  friends  ;  though  not  intemperate,  according  to  the 
standards  of  the  time,  he  sometimes  used  wine  to  excess,  gen- 
erally taking  it  to  overcome  his  natural  diffidence  and  to 
stimulate  his  conversational  powers,  which  Swift,  Steele,  and 
Lady  Mary  Montague  declare  to  have  been  remarkable  ;  he 
enters  Parliament  for  Lostwithiel  in  1708,  is  unseated  in  De- 
cember, 1709,  and  through  the  influence  of  Wharton  is  at 
once  reflected  for  Malmesbury;  he  holds  this  office  during  life, 


ADDISON  85 

but  his  modesty  prevents  him  from  speaking  in  Parliament ;  he 
defends  the  Whig  ministry  vigorously  in  the  Whig  Examiner 
(five  numbers)  in  the  autumn  of  1710;  with  the  fall  of  the 
Whigs,  early  in  1711,  Addison  loses  his  secretaryship  (then 
worth  ^2,000  a  year),  and  in  the  same  year  loses  an  estate  in 
India  valued  at  ^14,000,  left  him  by  a  brother  ;  but  he  soon 
afterward  buys  an  estate  in  Bilton,  Warwickshire,  paying 
;£io,ooo  ;  other  indications  of  his  comfortable  financial  con- 
dition are  the  resignation  of  his  fellowship  in  1711  and  the 
abandonment  of  half  the  profits  of  his  play,  "  Cato  "  in  1713  ; 
Steelehad  started  the  Tatler  on  April  12,  1709,  and  Addison, 
then  in  Ireland,  contributed  one  or  two  papers,  but  his  fre- 
quent and  important  contributions  do  not  begin  till  October 
15,  1709  (No.  8 1  of  the  Tatler};  he  contributes  frequently 
during  1710,  and  his  papers  have  great  influence  in  making 
the  periodical  popular  ;  of  the  Tatler  papers,  forty-one  are 
attributed  solely  to  Addison  and  thirty-four  to  Addison  and 
Steele  in  conjunction  ;  Addison's  contributions  are  in  the 
form  of  essays  rather  than  statements  of  news,  and  contain 
some  of  the  finest  specimens  of  his  humor  ;  the  Tatler  ceases 
January  2,  1711;  the  Spectator  begins  March  i,  1711,  and 
continues  through  555  daily  numbers,  till  December  6,  1712, 
when  it  is  killed  by  the  new  stamp  duty  ;  its  daily  sales  some- 
times reached  20,000  copies  ;  of  the  555  numbers,  Addison 
wrote  274,  his  contributions  being  signed  by  one  of  the  let- 
ters CLIO;  his  Spectator  essays,  especially  the  Roger  de  Cov- 
erley  papers,  established  his  style  as  a  model  for  the  century 
following  ;  in  seventeen  Spectator  papers  on  "  Paradise  Lost, ' ' 
he  establishes  the  orthodox  estimate  of  Milton's  genius  ;  Ad- 
dison's "  divine  poems  "  are  also  published  in  the  Spectator 
during  the  autumn  of  1712  ;  he  finishes  his  play  of  "  Cato  " 
(most  of  it  written  as  early  as  1703),  and  it  is  put  on  the 
stage  April  14,  1713,  with  great  success,  although  its  dra- 
matic weakness  and  its  excessive  declamation  are  admitted ; 
Pope  wrote  a  prologue  for  the  play,  Swift  overcame  his  recent 


86  ADDISON 

hostility  to  Addison  and  attended  a  rehearsal,  and  both  Whigs 
and  Tories  vied  with  each  other  in  patronizing  both  the  au- 
thor and  the  actors;  eight  editions  of  "  Cato  "  were  pub- 
lished during  1713,  and  it  was  translated  into  French,  Italian, 
German,  and  Latin ;  Voltaire  called  it  "  the  first  reason- 
able English  tragedy;  "  John  Dennis  made  a  severe  attack 
on  Addison  because  of  its  awkward  dramatic  construction, 
and  was  answered  by  Pope ;  later,  Pope  became  offended  at 
Addison,  unjustly  charging  him  with  abetting  Tickell  in 
Tickell's  supposed  attempt  to  rival  Pope's  "  Homer,"  and  so 
Pope  wrote  his  famous  satire  on  "Atticus;  "  evidence  since 
discovered  has  proved  Pope  guilty  of  despicable  conduct  in  his 
treatment  of  the  case,  and  has  shown  Addison  to  have  been 
entirely  innocent  of  Pope's  charges  ;  Addison  contributes  fifty- 
one  papers  to  the  Guardian  during  1713  and  twenty-four 
papers  to  a  new  Spectator  (probably  conducted  by  Budgell)  in 
1714  ;  during  the  same  year  he  furnishes  two  papers  to  Steele's 
Lover,  and  writes  a  prose  comedy,  "  The  Drummer,"  which 
is  represented  unsuccessfully  in  1715,  and  is  afterward  pub- 
lished by  Steele  ;  on  the  death  of  Queen  Anne  (August  i , 
1714)  Addison  is  made  secretary  to  the  Lords  Justices,  and 
soon  afterward  becomes  secretary  to  Sunderland,  then  newly 
appointed  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland ;  ten  months  later,  on 
Sutherland's  retirement,  Addison  is  made  one  of  the  Lords 
Commissioners  of  Trade;  from  December  23,  1715,  to  June 
9,  1716,  he  publishes  the  Freeholder — fifty-five  papers — in 
defence  of  Whig  principles;  on  August  3,  1716,  he  mar- 
ries the  Countess  of  Warwick,  his  long-time  friend  and 
neighbor ;  gossip  says  that  the  alliance  was  an  unhappy 
one,  but  his  marriage  doubtless  aided  Addison's  political  ad- 
vancement;  in  the  spring  of  1717  he  is  made  fellow  Secre- 
tary of  State  with  Townshend  ;  he  retires  from  office  in  March, 
1718,  with  a  pension  of  ^£1,500  a  year,  and  begins,  but  does 
not  complete,  several  literary  undertakings  ;  meantime  he  has 
become  estranged  from  Steele  because  of  Steele's  failure  tore- 


ADDISON  87 

pay  loans  made  him  by  Addison  ;  Addison's  last  writing  con- 
sists of  two  papers  in  the  Old  Whig,  in  March  and  April, 
1719,  severely  replying  to  articles  by  Steele,  published  in  the 
Plebeian  ;  he  dies  peacefully  at  Holland  House,  June  17,  1719, 
leaving  his  widow  and  one  daughter,  the  latter  said  to  have 
been  of  feeble  mind. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY    ON    ADDISON'S   STYLE. 

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per, 173-191. 

Johnson,  S.,  "Works."     New  York,  1846,  Harper,  288-309. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "Miscellaneous  Works."  New  York,  1880,  Harper, 
3:  407-488. 

Gosse,  E.,  "  History  of  the  i8th  Century  Literature."  New  York,  1889, 
Macmillan,  105-107  and  v. ,  index. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  "History  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1875, 
Holt,  2:  3 1 9-35 1. 

Courthope,  W.  J.,  "English  Men  of  Letters."  New  York,  1884,  Har- 
per. 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."  London,  1884,  G.  Bell 
&  Son,  2:  127-133. 

De  Quincey,  Thomas,  "  Works."  Edinburgh,  1890,  A.  &  C.  Black,  II  : 
19-29. 

Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1883, 
Appleton,  171-181. 

Green,  J.   R.,  "Essays  of  Addison."      New   York,    1890,    Macmillan, 

5-25. 

Hunt,  T.  W.,  "  Representative  English  Prose."  New  York,  1887,  Arm- 
strong, 288-309. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 260-265. 

Aiken,  J.,  "Essays."     London,  1811,  J.  Johnson,  335-346. 

Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1893, 
Harper,  i :  499~533- 

Stephen,  L.,  "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."  New  York,  1888, 
Macmillan,  i:  122-134. 

Ward,  T.  H.,  "The  English  Poets."  New  York,  1881,  Macmillan,  3  : 
1-6. 

Pope,  A.,  "Poems"  ("Dunciad"),  2:   verses  124-140. 

L'Estrange,  A.  G.,  "History  of  English  Humor."  London,  1878, 
Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :  77-99. 


88  ADDISON 

Howitt,  William,    "Homes   and   Haunts   of   British    Poets."     London, 

1863,  Routledge,  I  :  139. 
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v.  Preface  to  Vol.  I. 
Bascom,  J.,  "The  Philosophy  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1870, 

Putnam,  178-181. 
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377-392. 
Backus,  F.  J.,  &  Shaw,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     New  York, 

1879,  Sheldon,  214-223. 
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Co.,  6:    147-155. 
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Sons,  6:  673-752. 
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Co.,  153-163. 

Saturday  Review,  8 :  394-396. 
Eraser's  Magazine,  28 :  304-320. 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  7 :  324-344  (C.  C.  Clarke). 
London  Quarterly,  4:   99-122  (Lyall). 
Temple  Bar,  41  :   319-337  ;   55  :  33~52- 
Edinburgh  Review,  78 :    193-260  (Macaulay). 
Eclectic  Review,  78:    193  and  264-290  (Aiken). 
Western  Magazine,  3:   232-244  (J.  J.  J.). 
Century  Magazine,  48  :   703-709  (Mrs.  Oliphant). 
Canadian  Monthly,  15:  411-420  (Lyall). 
Dial  (Chicago),  4:   282-283  (M.  B.  Anderson). 
North  American  Review,  64:   314-372  (W.    B.  Peabody);   79:    90-109 

(H.  T.  Tucker  man). 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  32:  450-455. 
Century,  26:   703-709  (Mrs.  Oliphant). 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Urbanity — Elegance. — To  the  familiar  ease  of  Steele 
Addison  added  a  polish  never  surpassed  and  rarely  equalled. 
"  He  represents,"  says  one  critic,  "  the  amenities  and  not  the 
heroism  of  literature. ' '  Bascom  calls  him  ' '  a  polished  shaft  in 
the  temple  of  letters. "  For  two  hundred  years  the  literary 
world  accepted  Johnson's  famous  dictum  :  "  Whoever  wishes 
to  attain  an  English  style  familiar  but  not  coarse  and  elegant 


ADDISON  89 

but  not  ostentatious,  must  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the 
volumes  of  Addison."  He  is  "  eminent  for  his  humanity." 
"  Elegance,"  says  Minto,  "  is  the  ruling  quality  of  his  style. 
We  might  go  the  round  of  our  great  writers  for  such 
another  example  of  superficial  smoothness.  The  wit  and 
polish  are  exquisite."  "  Were  I  left  to  myself,"  says  Addi- 
son, in  one  of  his  papers,  "  I  should  rather  aim  at  instructing 
than  diverting,  but  if  we  will  be  useful  to  the  world,  we  must 
take  it  as  we  find  it. ' '  And  so  he  diverts  by  the  elegance  of 
his  diction  as  well  as  by  the  brightness  of  his  wit.  While, 
in  the  opinion  of  some  critics,  Macaulay  and  Hawthorne  have 
supplanted  Addison  as  models  for  the  writers  of  the  present 
day,  he  must  still  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of 
elegant  yet  idiomatic  prose.  Macaulay  calls  Addison's  ' '  Cato ' ' 
"a  play  the  whole  merit  of  which  consists  in  its  stately  rhetoric, 
a  rhetoric  sometimes  not  unworthy  of  Lucan." 

"  His  writings  are  the  pure  source  of  classical  style.  Men 
never  spoke  in  England  better.  Ornaments  abound,  and 
rhetoric  has  no  part  in  them.  There  are  happy  expressions, 
easily  discovered,  which  give  things  a  new  and  ingenious 
turn  ;  harmonious  periods  in  which  the  sounds  flow  into  one 
another  with  the  diversity  and  sweetness  of  a  quiet  stream  ;  a 
fertile  vein  of  invention  and  images,  through  which  runs  the 
most  amiable  irony.  .  .  .  His  writings  are  conversa- 
tions, masterpieces  of  English  urbanity  and  reason  ;  nearly 
all  the  details  of  his  character  and  life  have  contributed  to 
nourish  this  urbanity  and  reasonableness." — Taine. 

"I  have  often  reflected,  after  a  night  spent  with  him  [Ad- 
dison], apart  from  all  the  world,  that  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
conversing  with  an  intimate  acquaintance  of  Terence  and 
Catullus,  who  had  all  their  wit  and  nature  heightened  with 
humor  more  exquisite  and  delightful  than  any  other  man  ever 
possessed . ' ' — Steele. 

"  His  conversation  had  something  in  it  more  charming 
than  I  have  found  in  any  other  man." — Pope. 


go  ADDISON 

"  Many  of  his  moral  essays  are  exquisitely  beautiful  and 
happy.  They  are  the  perfection  of  elegant  sermonizing." — 
Hazlitt. 

"  The  great  Boileau,  upon  perusal  of  Mr.  Addison's  ele- 
gant hexameters,  was  first  made  aware  that  England  was  not 
altogether  a  barbarous  nation." — Thackeray. 

"  The  first  English  writer  who  composed  a  regular  tragedy 
and  infused  a  spirit  of  elegance  through  every  part  of  it  was 
the  illustrious  Mr.  Addison.  His  '  Cato '  is  a  masterpiece 
both  with  regard  to  the  diction  and  the  harmony  and  beauty 
of  the  numbers." — Voltaire. 

"  He  wrote  English  with  the  simplicity,  directness,  and 
grace  which  still  render  the  Spectator  a  model  of  prose  com- 
position. .  .  .  If  we  have  remained  true  to  the  fountain 
of  '  English  undefiled,'  amid  the  glaring  and  spasmodic  al- 
lurements of  later  authors,  the  tranquil  tone,  the  clear  diction, 
and  the  harmonized  expression  of  Addison  will  affect  us  like 
the  permanent  effulgence  of  a  star  when  the  flashing  curve  of 
a  rocket  has  gone  out  in  darkness.  .  .  .  His  censorship 
was  tempered  with  good-feeling,  his  expression  untainted 
with  vulgarity  ;  he  was  familiar  without  losing  refinement  of 
tone ;  he  used  language  as  a  crystal  medium  to  enshrine 
sense  and  not  as  a  grotesque  costume  to  hide  the  want  of  it ; 
he  was  above  the  conceits  of  false  wit  and  too  much  of  a 
Christian  to  profane  his  gifts ;  in  a  word,  he  wrote  like  a 
gentleman  and  a  scholar,  and  yet  without  the  fine  airs  of  the 
one  or  the  pedantry  of  the  other.  .  .  .  He  lacked  em- 
phasis and  fire ;  but  their  absence  is  fully  compensated  by 
grace,  truth,  and  serenity.  It  is  not  only  among  the  moun- 
tains and  by  the  sea-shore  that  Nature  hoards  her  beauty  but 
also  on  meadow-slopes  and  around  sequestered  lakes ;  and  in 
like  manner  human  life  and  thought  have  their  phases  of  tran- 
quil attraction  and  genial  repose  as  well  as  of  sublime  and 
impassioned  development." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  His  style,  with  its  free,  unaffected  movement,  its  clear 


ADDISON  91 

distinctness,  its  graceful  transitions,  its  delicate  harmonies,  its 
appropriateness  of  tone  ;  the  temperance  and  moderation  of 
his  treatment,  the  effortless  self-mastery,  the  sense  of  quiet 
power,  the  absence  of  exaggeration  or  extravagance,  the  per- 
fect keeping  with  which  he  deals  with  his  subjects ;  or  again 
the  exquisite  reserve,  the  subtle  tenderness,  the  geniality,  the 
pathos  of  his  humor — what  are  these  but  the  reflection  of 
Addison  himself,  of  that  temper  so  pure  and  lofty  yet  so  sym- 
pathetic, so  strong  yet  so  lovable?  " — J.  R.  Green. 

"As  a  writer  he  is  urbane,  cheerful,  charming,  and  well- 
mannered  to  a  degree  which  has  scarcely  been  surpassed  in 
the  history  of  the  world.  His  irony  prepossesses  a  little  circle 
of  the  best  and  most  cultivated  listeners.  .  .  .  Addison 
was  excessively  fastidious  in  choice  of  words,  laboriously  polish- 
ing and  balancing  his  phrases  until  they  represented  the  finest 
literary  art  at  his  disposal." — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  His  elegance  of  language  and  variegation  of  prose  and 
verse  gain  upon  the  reader.  .  .  .  Before  the  profound 
observers  of  the  present  race  repose  too  securely  on  the  con- 
sciousness of  their  own  superiority  to  Addison,  let  them  con- 
sider his  remarks  on  Ovid,  in  which  may  be  found  criticisms 
sufficiently  subtle  and  refined ;  let  them  peruse  likewise  his 
essays  on  'Wit '  and  on  the  '  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination,' 
in  which  he  founds  art  on  the  base  of  nature,  and  draws  the 
principles  of  invention  from  dispositions  inherent  in  the  mind 
of  man  with  skill  and  elegance  such  as  his  contemners  will 
not  easily  attain." — Samuel  Johnson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  is  an  infinite  variety  of  motions  to  be  made  use  of  in 
the  flutter  of  a  fan  ;  there  is  the  angry  flutter,  the  modest  flut- 
ter, the  timorous  flutter,  the  confused  flutter,  the  merry  flutter, 
and  the  amorous  flutter.  Not  to  be  tedious,  there  is  scarce  any 
emotion  in  the  mind  which  does  not  produce  a  suitable  agitation 
in  the  fan  ;  insomuch  that,  if  I  only  see  the  fan  of  a  disciplined 


92  ADDISON 

lady,  I  know  very  well  whether  she  laughs,  frowns,  or  blushes." 
—  The  Spectator, 

"  The  club  of  which  I  am  a  member  is  very  luckily  composed 
of  such  persons  as  are  engaged  in  different  ways  of  life  and  de- 
puted as  it  were  out  of  the  most  conspicuous  classes  of  mankind  : 
by  this  means  I  am  furnished  with  the  greatest  variety  of  hints 
and  materials,  and  know  everything  that  passes  in  the  different 
quarters  and  divisions  not  only  of  this  great  city  but  of  the  whole 
kingdom." — The  Spectator, 

"  These  obvious  speculations  made  me  at  length  conclude 
that  there  is  a  sort  of  vegetable  principle  in  the  mind  of  every 
man  when  he  comes  into  the  world.  In  infants  the  seeds  lie 
buried  and  undiscovered  till  after  awhile  they  sprout  forth  in  a 
kind  of  rational  leaves,  which  are  words,  and  in  due  season  the 
flowers  begin  to  appear  in  a  variety  of  beautiful  colors,  and  all 
the  gay  pictures  of  youthful  fancy  and  imagination." — The  Spec- 
tator, 

"  A  man  of  polite  imagination  is  led  into  a  great  many  pleas- 
ures that  the  vulgar  are  not  capable  of  receiving.  He  can  con- 
verse with  a  picture  and  find  an  agreeable  companion  in  a  statue. 
He  meets  with  a  secret  refreshment  in  a  description,  and  often 
feels  a  greater  satisfaction  in  the  prospects  of  fields  and  meadows 
than  another  does  in  the  possession.  It  gives  him,  indeed,  a 
kind  of  property  in  everything  he  sees,  and  makes  the  most  rude 
and  uncultivated  parts  of  nature  administer  to  his  pleasures  :  so 
that  he  looks  upon  the  world,  as  it  were,  in  another  light,  and 
discovers  in  it  a  multitude  of  charms  that  conceal  themselves 
from  the  generality  of  mankind." — The  Spectator, 

2.  Keen  Satire. — Until  Addison's  day  English  satire 
had  been  comparatively  gross.  His  satire  is  more  polite  than 
that  of  Butler  and  Swift,  but  perhaps  not  quite  so  kindly  as 
that  of  Steele.  Minto  alone,  of  all  his  critics,  sees  an  ele- 
ment of  malevolence  in  Addison's  satire.  He  calls  him  "  the 
great  English  example  of  polite  ridicule."  and  declares  that 
not  a  single  paper  of  Addison's  can  be  pointed  out  that  does 
not  contain  "  a  stroke  of  gay  malevolence."  On  the  other 
hand,  Thackeray  calls  him  "  the  gentle  satirist,  who  hit  no  un- 
fair blow;  the  kind  judge,  who  castigated  only  in  smiling,"  and 


ADDISON  93 

Macaulay  declares  that  Addison  revolutionized  society  without 
writing  one  personal  lampoon.  His  satire  is  usually  pointed 
at  classes,  but  it  is  at  classes  under  imaginary  individual  types. 
In  one  of  his  earliest  papers,  Addison  says:  "  I  must  entreat 
every  person  who  reads  this  paper  [the  Spectator]  never  to 
think  himself  or  any  of  his  friends  aimed  at  in  what  is  said, 
for  I  promise  him  never  to  draw  a  faulty  character  which 
does  not  fit  at  least  a  thousand  people  or  to  publish  a  single 
paper  that  is  not  written  in  the  spirit  of  benevolence." 

"As  a  moral  satirist  he  stands  unrivalled.  .  .  .  Ad- 
dison's  power  of  turning  either  an  absurd  book  or  an  absurd 
man  into  ridicule  was  unrivalled.  .  .  .  He  was  gifted 
with  incomparable  powers  of  ridicule.  .  .  .  There  are 
certainly  no  satirical  papers  superior  to  those  in  which  the 
Tory  fox-hunter  is  introduced.  ...  As  a  satirist,  he 
was,  at  his  own  weapons,  more  than  Pope's  match. 
The  great  satirist,  who,  alone  knew  how  to  use  ridicule  with- 
out abusing  it." — Macaulay. 

"  Perhaps  the  best  way  of  describing  Addison's  peculiar 
pleasantry  is  to  compare  it  with  the  pleasantry  of  some  other 
great  satirists.  The  three  most  eminent  masters  of  the  art  of 
ridicule  during  the  eighteenth  century  were,  we  conceive, 
Addison,  Swift,  and  Voltaire.  Which  of  the  three  had  the 
greatest  power  of  moving  laughter  may  be  questioned.  But 
each  of  them,  within  his  own  domain,  was  supreme.  Vol- 
taire is  the  prince  of  buffoons.  His  merriment  is  without 
disguise  or  restraint.  He  gambols;  he  grins;  he  shakes  his 
sides ;  he  points  the  finger  ;  he  turns  up  the  nose;  he  shoots 
out  the  tongue.  The  manner  of  Swift  is  the  very  opposite  of 
this.  He  moves  laughter,  but  never  joins  in  it.  He  appears  in 
his  works  such  as  he  appeared  in  society.  All  the  company  are 
convulsed  with  merriment ;  while  the  dean,  the  author  of  all  the 
mirth,  preserves  an  invincible  gravity,  and  even  sourness  of 
aspect,  and  gives  utterance  to  the  most  eccentric  and  ludicrous 
fancies  with  the  air  of  a  man  reading  the  commination  service. 


94  ADDISON 

The  manner  of  Addison  is  as  remote  from  that  of  Swift  as 
from  that  of  Voltaire.  He  neither  laughs  out  like  the  French 
wit,  nor,  like  the  Irish  wit,  throws  a  double  portion  of  severity 
into  his  countenance  while  laughing  inly ;  but  preserves  a 
look  peculiarly  his  own — a  look  of  demure  severity,  disturbed 
only  by  an  arch  sparkle  of  the  eye,  an  almost  imperceptible 
elevation  of  the  brow,  an  almost  imperceptible  curl  of  the  lip. 
We  own  that  the  humor  of  Addison  is,  in  our  opinion,  of  a 
more  delicious  flavor  than  the  humor  of  either  Swift  or  Vol- 
taire. Thus  much,  at  least,  is  certain,  that  both  Swift  and 
Voltaire  have  been  successfully  mimicked,  and  that  no  man 
has  yet  been  able  to  mimic  Addison." — Macaulay. 

"  His  .delicate  satire  .  .  .  gives  his  sketches  a  pre- 
cision, a  neatness,  an  epigrammatic  point  which  are  wanting 
in  Steele's  more  clumsy  and  more  good-humored  delinea- 
tions."—^./. Nicoll. 

"  Addison  gave  the  first  example  of  the  proper  use  of  wit. 
It  was  his  practice,  when  he  found  any  man  invincibly  wrong, 
to  flatter  his  opinions  by  acquiescence  and  sink  them  yet 
deeper  into  absurdity." — Swift. 

"  The  first  paper  sent  by  Addison  to  the  Tatter  was  No. 
1 8,  wherein  is  displayed  that  inimitable  art  which  makes 
a  man  appear  infinitely  ridiculous  by  the  ironical  commen- 
dation of  his  offences  against  right,  reason,  and  good 
taste.  .  .  .  His  power  of  ridiculing  keenly  without 
malignity  is,  of  course,  best  shown  in  the  character  of  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley,  whose  delightful  simplicity  of  mind  is 
made  the  medium  of  much  good-natured  satire  on  the  man- 
ners of  the  Tory  country  gentleman  of  the  period. 
On  other  occasions  he  ridicules  some  fashion  of  taste  by  a 
perfectly  grave  and  simple  description  of  its  object.  Per- 
haps the  most  admirable  specimen  of  the  oblique  manner  of 
his  satire  is  that  on  the  Italian  Opera,  in  the  number  of  the 
Spectator  describing  the  various  lions  who  had  fought  on  the 
stage  with  Nicolini." — W.  J.  Courthope. 


ADDISON  95 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  next  step  to  our  refinement  was  the  introducing  of  Ital- 
ian actors  into  our  opera  ;  who  sang  their  parts  in  their  own 
language,  at  the  same  time  that  our  country  performed  theirs  in 
our  native  tongue.  At  length  the  audience  grew  tired  of  under- 
standing half  the  opera  ;  and  to  ease  themselves  entirely  of  the 
fatigue  of  thinking,  have  so  ordered  it  at  present  that  the  whole 
opera  is  performed  in  an  unknown  tongue.  I  have  heard  the 
word  And  pursued  through  the  whole  gamut,  have  been  enter- 
tained with  many  a  melodious  The,  and  have  heard  the  most 
beautiful  graces,  quavers,  and  divisions,  bestowed  upon  Then, 
For,  and  From  ;  to  the  eternal  honor  of  our  English  particles." 
—  The  Spectator. 

"  A  third  kind  of  female  orators  may  be  comprehended  under 
the  word  Gossips.  Mrs.  Fiddle  Faddle  is  perfectly  accomplished 
in  this  kind  of  eloquence  ;  she  launches  out  into  descriptions  of 
christenings,  runs  divisions  upon  an  head-dress,  knows  every  dish 
of  meat  that  is  served  up  in  her  neighborhood,  and  entertains  her 
company  a  whole  afternoon  together  with  the  wit  of  her  little  boy 
before  he  is  able  to  speak." —  The  Spectator. 

"  He  is  therefore  to  teach  them  the  art  of  finding  flaws,  loop- 
holes, and  evasions  in  the  most  solemn  compacts,  and  particu- 
larly a  great  rabbinical  secret,  revived  of  late  years  by  the  fra- 
ternity of  Jesuits,  namely,  that  contradictory  interpretations  of 
the  same  article  may  both  of  them  be  true  and  valid.  ...  In 
short,  this  professor  is  to  give  the  society  their  stiffening  and  in- 
fuse into  their  manners  that  beautiful  political  starch,  which  may 
qualify  them  for  levees,  conferences,  visits,  and  make  them  shine 
in  what  vulgar  minds  are  apt  to  look  upon  as  trifles." — The 
Spectator. 

3.  Moral  Elevation — High  Purpose. — Addison  is 
the  great  lay-preacher  of  our  literature.  He  spoke  to  a  peo- 
ple still  steeped  in  the  vices  that  followed  the  Restoration — a 
people  who  would  not  have  heeded  for  a  moment  the  reproofs 
of  a  regularly  ordained  clergyman — and  by  his  winsome  skill 
he  even  "made  morality  fashionable."  Taine  unjustly  ridi- 
cules "  the  sticky  plaster  of  his  morality,"  but  he  justly 


C/5  ADDISON 

adds,  "  Formerly  honest  men  were  not  polished  and  polished 
men  were  not  honest ;  piety  was  fanatical  and  urbanity  de- 
praved." It  was  Addison's  glory  that,  as  he  said,  he 
"  brought  philosophy  out  of  closets  and  libraries,  schools  and 
colleges,  to  dwell  in  clubs  and  assemblies,  at  tea-tables  and  in 
coffee-houses."  "  We  put  as  the  supreme  point  in  the  man," 
says  Bascom,  "  the  purity  of  his  spirit,  the  generosity  of  his 
temper,  and  rejoice  that  his  excellent  work  stands  fast  by  the 
altar  of  worship." 

"  Is  the  glory  of  Heaven  to  be  sung  only  by  gentlemen  in 
black  coats  ?  Must  the  truth  be  expounded  only  in  gown  and 
surplice,  and  out  of  those  two  vestments  can  nobody  preach 
it  ?  Commend  me  to  this  dear  preacher  without  orders — this 
parson  in  the  tye-wig.  .  .  .  His  sense  of  religion  stirs 
through  his  whole  being." — Thackeray. 

"  Of  the  services  which  his  essays  rendered  to  morality  it 
is  difficult  to  speak  too  highly.  .  .  .  He  taught  the  na- 
tion that  the  faith  and  the  morality  of  Hale  and  Tillotson 
might  be  found  in  company  with  wit  more  sparkling  than  the 
wit  of  Congreve,  and  with  humor  richer  than  the  humor  of 
Vanbrugh.  So  effectually,  indeed,  did  he  retort  on  vice  the 
mockery  which  had  recently  been  directed  against  virtue,  that, 
since  his  time,  the  open  violation  of  decency  has  always  been 
considered  among  us  as  the  mark  of  a  fool. — Macau/ay." 

"  No  whiter  page  than  Addison's  remains  ; 
He  from  the  taste  obscene  reclaims  our  youth, 
And  sets  the  passions  on  the  side  of  truth ; 
Forms  the  soft  bosom  with  the  gentlest  art, 
And  pours  each  human  virtue  through  the  heart." — Pope. 

"The  world  became  insensibly  reconciled  to  wisdom  and 
goodness  when  they  saw  them  recommended  by  him  with  at 
least  as  much  spirit  and  elegance  as  that  with  which  they  had 
been  ridiculed  for  half  a  century." — Tickell. 

"It  is  justly  observed  by  Tickell,  that  he  employed  wit  on 


ADDISON  97 

the  side  of  virtue  and  religion  ;  he  not  only  made  the  proper 
use  of  wit  himself,  but  taught  it  to  others  ;  and  from  his  time 
it  has  been  generally  subservient  to  the  cause  of  reason  and  of 
truth.  He  has  dissipated  the  prejudice  that  has  long  con- 
nected gayety  and  vice,  and  easiness  of  manner  with  laxity  of 
principles.  He  has  restored  virtue  to  its  dignity,  and  taught 
innocence  not  to  be  ashamed.  This  is  an  elevation  of  literary 
character  above  all  Greek,  above  all  Roman  fame.  .  . 
If  any  judgment  be  made  from  his  books  of  his  moral 
character,  nothing  will  be  found  but  purity  and  excellence. 
As  a  teacher  of  wisdom  he  may  be  confidently  fol- 
lowed. His  religion  has  nothing  in  it  enthusiastic  or  super- 
stitious ;  he  appears  neither  weakly  credulous  nor  wantonly 
sceptical  ;  his  morality  is  neither  dangerously  lax  nor  im- 
practicably rigid.  All  enchantment  of  fancy  and  all  cogency 
of  argument  are  employed  to  recommend  to  the  reader  his 
real  interest,  the  care  of  pleasing  the  Author  of  his  being. 
Truth  is  shown  sometimes  as  the  phantom  of  a  vision,  some- 
times appears  half-veiled  in  an  allegory,  sometimes  attracts 
regard  in  the  robes  of  fancy,  and  sometimes  steps  forth  in  the 
confidence  of  reason.  She  wears  a  thousand  dresses,  and  in 
all  is  pleasing." — Johnson. 

"  What  has  given  its  superior  reputation  to  the  Spectator 
[over  the  Taf/er\  is  the  greater  gravity  of  its  pretensions,  its 
moral  dissertations,  and  critical  reasonings." — Hazlitt. 

"  The  work  of  Addison  consisted  in  building  up  a  public 
opinion,  which,  in  the  way  of  durable  solidity,  seems,  like  the 
great  Gothic  cathedrals,  to  absorb  into  itself  the  individuality 
of  the  architect.  A  vigorous  effort  of  thought  is  required  to 
perceive  how  strong  this  individuality  must  have  been.  We 
have  to  reflect  on  the  ease  with  which,  even  in  these  days 
when  the  foundations  of  all  authority  are  called  in  question, 
we  form  judgments  on  questions  of  morals,  breeding,  and 
taste,  and  then  to  dwell  in  imagination  on  the  state  of  conflict 
in  all  matters — religious,  moral,  and  artistic — which  prevailed 
7 


98  ADDISON 

in  the  period  between  the  Restoration  and  the  succession  of  the 
house  of  Hanover.  To  whom  do  we  owe  the  comparative  har- 
mony we  enjoy?  Undoubtedly  to  the  authors  of  the  Spectator, 
and  first  of  all  these,  by  universal  consent,  to  Addison. 
The  aim  of  the  Spectator  was  to  establish  a  natural  standard 
of  conduct  in  morals,  manners,  art,  and  literature. 
He  showed  the  courtiers,  in  a  form  of  light  literature  which 
pleased  their  imagination,  and  with  a  grace  and  charm  of 
manner  that  they  were  well  qualified  to  appreciate,  that  true 
religion  was  not  opposed  to  good-breeding.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  brought  his  raillery  to  bear  on  the  super-solemnity'  of 
the  trading  and  professional  classes,  in  whom  the  spirit  of 
Puritanism  was  most  prevalent.  .  .  .  His  design  was  to 
hold  as  'twere  the  mirror  up  to  nature,  so  that  the  conscience 
of  society  might  recognize  in  a  dramatic  form  the  nature  of 
its  lapses  from  virtue  and  reason.  .  .  .  His  moralizing 
is  natural,  for  the  age  required  it ;  but  it  is  free  from  the 
censoriousness  of  the  preacher. " —  W.  J.  Courthope. 

11  Addison  corrects  failings  by  showing  their  absurdity;  he 
does  not  smite  the  erring  with  a  flail ;  he  takes  them  cordially 
by  the  hand,  puts  them  in  the  straight  path  of  morals,  and 
sends  them  on  their  way  with  a  compliment.  .  .  .  Ad- 
dison has  more  pity  for  than  wrath  against  great  offenders. 
He  gleams  out  with  playful  summer  lightning,  and 
while  offenders  admire,  they  yet  look  up.  Their  eye  is  not 
yet  on  the  earth,  their  gaze  is  on  heaven ;  and  when  the 
moral  philosopher  has  got  them  there,  he  leaves  them  to  the 
chance  of  finding  a  Christian  missionary  who  may  do  what 
he  was  unequal  to — lead  them  to  something  more  profitable 
than  gazing.  .  .  .  He  was  better  qualified  perhaps  than 
most  men  for  being  the  censor  of  abuses  and  the  corrector  of 
manners.  He  could  afford  to  be  indulgent  while  he  was 
most  severe  ;  he  condones  even  while  he  condemns.  His  pen 
is  not  dipt  in  gall.  He  has  not  the  scowl  of  the  cynic  or  the 
grin  of  the  satyr.  He  does  not  wield  the  lash  of  the  execu- 


ADDISON  99 

tioner  nor  the  birch  of  the  pedagogue.  He  looks  with  kindly 
eye  upon  the  very  follies  which  he  chastises,  while  his  moral 
instincts  lead  him  to  recoil  from  all  that  is  base  in  purpose 
and  unworthy  in  conduct." — W.  Lyall. 

"Addison  gave  to  literature  a  respectability  which  it  sel- 
dom possessed  before.  He  became  the  ideal  of  an  author. 
He  helped  to  dig  the  channel  which  connects  the  stream  of 
private  knowledge  with  the  popular  mind,  across  the  isthmus 
of  an  aristocracy  of  birth,  of  education,  and  of  society." — 
H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Without  inflicting  a  wound  he  effected  a  great  social 
reform,  and  reconciled  wit  and  virtue  after  a  long  and 
disastrous  separation,  during  which  wit  had  been  led  astray 
by  profligacy  and  virtue  by  fanaticism.  .  .  .  That 
which  chiefly  distinguished  Addison  from  Swift,  from  Vol- 
taire, from  almost  all  the  other  great  masters  of  ridicule,  is 
the  grace,  the  nobleness,  the  moral  purity,  which  we  find 
even  in  his  merriment.  .  .  .  Nothing  great,  nothing 
amiable,  no  moral  duty,  no  doctrine  of  natural  or  revealed 
religion  has  ever  been  associated  by  Addison  with  any  degrad- 
ing idea.  His  humanity  is  without  a  parallel  in  literary  his- 
tory. .  .  .  No  kind  of  power  is  more  formidable  than 
the  power  of  making  men  ridiculous  ;  and  that  power  Addison 
possessed  in  boundless  measure.  But  of  Addison  it  may  be 
confidently  affirmed  that  he  has  blackened  no  man's  character, 
nay,  that  it  would  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  find,  in  all 
the  volumes  that  he  has  left  us,  a  single  taunt  which  can  be 
called  ungenerous  or  unkind." — Macaulay. 

"And  out  of  that  [Sir  Roger  de  Coverley's]  laughter,  and 
out  of  that  sweet  weakness,  and  out  of  those  harmless  eccen- 
tricities and  follies,  and  out  of  that  touched  brain,  and  out  of 
that  honest  manhood  and  simplicity — we  get  a  result  of  hap- 
piness, goodness,  tenderness,  pity,  piety  such  as,  if  my  audi- 
ence will  think  their  reading  and  hearing  over,  doctors  and 
divines  but  seldom  have  the  fortune  to  inspire.  .  .  . 


100  ADDISON 

When  this  man  looks  from  the  world,  whose  weaknesses  he 
describes  so  benevolently,  up  to  the  heaven  which  shines  over 
us  all,  I  can  hardly  fancy  a  human  face  lighting  up  with  a 
more  serene  rapture — a  human  intellect  thrilling  with  a  purer 
love  and  adoration  than  Joseph  Addison's.  .  .  .  When 
he  turns  to  heaven  a  Sabbath  comes  over  that  man's  mind  ; 
and  his  face  lights  up  from  it  with  a  glory  of  thanks  and 
prayers.  His  sense  of  religion  stirs  through  his  whole  being. 
In  the  field,  in  the  town  ;  looking  at  the  birds  in  the  trees,  at 
the  children  in  the  street ;  in  the  morning  or  in  the  moon- 
light ;  over  his  books  in  his  own  room,  in  a  happy  party  at 'a 
country  merry-making  or  a  town  assembly,  good-will  and 
peace  to  God's  creatures  and  love  and  awe  of  Him  who  made 
them,  fill  his  pure  heart  and  shine  from  his  kind  face." — 
Thackeray. 

"  He  acquired  the  art  of  rendering  morality  visible  and 
truth  expressive.  .  .  .  Such  a  man  might  judge  and 
counsel  his  fellows ;  his  judgments  were  not  amplifications 
arranged  by  a  process  of  the  brain  but  observations  controlled 
by  experience  ;  he  might  be  listened  to  on  moral  subjects  as 
a  natural  philosopher  was  upon  subjects  of  physics  ;  we  feel 
that  he  spoke  with  authority  and  that  we  are  instructed. 
.  He  employed  all  his  talent  and  all  his  writings  in 
giving  to  us  the  notion  of  what  we  are  worth  and  of  what 
we  ought  to  be.  ...  [He  once  wrote]  '  The  great  and 
only  end  of  these,  my  speculations,  is  to  banish  vice  and 
ignorance  out  of  the  territories  of  Great  Britain.'  And  he 
kept  his  word.  .  .  .  It  is  no  small  thing  to  make  mo- 
rality fashionable.  Addison  did  it,  and  it  has  remained  in 
fashion.  For  the  first  time,  Addison  reconciled  virtue  with 
elegance,  taught  duty  in  an  accomplished  style,  and  made 
pleasure  subservient  to  reason.  .  .  .  His  papers  are 
wholly  moral — advice  to  families,  reprimands  to  thoughtless 
women,  a  portrait  of  an  honest  man,  remedies  for  the  pas- 
sions, reflections  on  God,  on  the  future  life.  .  .  .  He 


ADDISON  IOI 

is  full  of  epigrams  written  against  flirtations,  extravagant 
toilets,  useless  visits.  He  writes  a  satirical  journal  of  a  man 
who  goes  to  his  club,  learns  the  news,  yawns,  studies  the 
barometer,  and  thinks  his  time  well  spent.  He  considers 
that  our  time  is  a  capital,  our  business  a  duty,  and  our  life 
a  task." — Taine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Were  I  conscious  of  anything  in  my  writings  that  is  not  in- 
nocent, at  least,  or  that  the  greatest  part  of  them  were  not  sin- 
cerely designed  to  discountenance  vice  and  ignorance  and  sup- 
port the  interest  of  true  wisdom  and  virtue,  I  should  be  more 
severe  upon  myself  than  the  public  is  disposed  to  be." — The 
Spectator. 

"And  now,  who  would  not  quit  all  the  pleasures  and  trash 
and  trifles  which  are  apt  to  captivate  the  heart  of  man,  and 
pursue  the  greatest  rigors  of  piety  and  austerities  of  a  good  life, 
to  purchase  to  himself  such  a  conscience,  as  at  the  hour  of  death, 
when  all  the  friendship  in  the  world  shall  bid  him  adieu,  and  the 
whole  creation  turn  its  back  upon  him,  shall  dismiss  the  soul, 
and  close  his  eyes  with  that  blessed  sentence,  '  Well  done,  thou 
good  and  faithful  servant,  enter  thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord.'" 
—  The  Spectator. 

"  There  is  another  kind  of  virtue  that  may  find  employment 
for  those  retired  hours  in  which  we  are  altogether  left  to  our- 
selves, and  destitute  of  company  and  conversation  ;  I  mean  that 
intercourse  and  communication  which  every  reasonable  being 
ought  to  maintain  with  the  great  Author  of  his  being.  The  man 
who  lives  under  a  habitual  sense  of  the  divine  presence  keeps 
up  a  perpetual  cheerfulness  of  temper,  and  enjoys  every  mo- 
ment the  satisfaction  of  thinking  himself  in  company  with  his 
dearest  and  best  of  friends." —  The  Spectator. 

4.  Delicate  Humor. — Addison  appeared  in  an  age  of  lit- 
erary affectation,  an  age  when  scurrility  and  licentious  literary 
buffoonery  had  depraved  the  public  taste.  "It  was,"  says 
T.  W.  Hunt,  "  the  golden  age  of  the  anagram,  the  acrostic,  and 
the  far-fetched  simile. ' '  Addison  at  first  defined  true  humor 


102  ADDISON 

and  then  continually  exemplified  it.  Thackeray  well  calls  him 
"  a  wit  that  makes  us  laugh  and  leaves  us  good  and  happy," 
and  adds,  "  He  came  in  that  artificial  age  and  began  to  speak 
with  his  noble,  natural  voice."  His  papers  fairly  overflow 
with  good-humor.  He  abounds  in  what  Hallam  aptly  calls 
"some  sly  Horatian  pleasantry  on  fashionable  follies." 

"In  the  constellation  of  men  of  genius  which  shed  lustre 
upon  English  literature  during  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  palm  is  given  to  Addison  for  that  delicate  kind 
of  humor  which,  for  the  purpose  either  of  correction  or  amuse- 
ment, attaches  a  gentle  and  good-natured  ridicule  to  delinea- 
tions of  manners  and  customs.  This  award  of  criticism  seems 
never  to  have  been  disputed  ;  and  if  we  include  in  the  com- 
petition all  the  attempts  in  this  walk  that  have  appeared  from 
his  age  to  the  present  time,  the  claim  of  Addison  to  superi- 
ority will  probably  still  remain  unshaken.  His  humor  is  most 
effectual  for  correcting  the  follies  and  foibles  of  mankind, 
which  he  seems  to  have  had  much  at  heart.  .  .  .  The 
Tatlcr,  in  its  later  portions,  is  enriched  with  some  exquisite 
specimens  of  that  delicate  and  graceful  wit,  that  original  vein 
of  humor,  and  that  sportiveness  of  fancy,  in  the  union  of 
which  he  had  no  predecessor  or  rival  and  has  had  no  suc- 
cessor."— Aiken. 

"  The  gentle  graces  of  Mr.  Addison  never  forsake  him  in  a 
paper  of  humor ;  the  bent  of  his  genius  lying  so  strongly  that 
way."—/.  R.  Green. 

"The  brilliant  Mary  Montagu  said  that  she  had  known 
all  the  wits,  and  that  Addison  was  the  best  company  in  the 
world.  Steele,  an  excellent  judge  of  lively  conversation,  said 
that  the  conversation  of  Addison  was  at  once  the  most  polite 
and  the  most  mirthful  that  could  be  imagined.  If,  as  Jenyns 
oddly  imagined,  if  the  happiness  of  Seraphim  and  just  men 
made  perfect  be  derived  from  an  exquisite  perception  of  the 
ludicrous,  their  mirth  must  surely  be  none  other  than  the 
mirth  of  Addison — a  mirth  consistent  with  tender  compassion 


ADDISON  103 

for  all  that  is  frail,  and  with  profound  reverence  for  all  that 
is  sublime.  But  what  shall  we  say  of  Addison's  humor — of 
his  sense  of  the  ludicrous,  of  his  power  of  awakening  that 
sense  in  others,  and  of  drawing  mirth  from  incidents  that 
occur  every  day  and  from  little  peculiarities  of  temper  and 
manner  such  as  may  be  found  in  every  man  ?  We  feel  the 
charm  ;  we  give  ourselves  up  to  it ;  but  we  strive  in  vain  to 
analyze  it." — Macau-lay. 

Dr.  Kippis  summarily  describes  the  character  of  Addison's 
humorous  productions  in  these  words  :  "  There  are  none  of 
his  works  in  which  his  merit  as  a  graceful  writer  more  dis- 
tinguishingly  appears  than  in  his  humorous  pieces.  His  hu- 
mor is  so  natural,  so  easy,  so  unaffected,  that  we  never  grow 
weary  of  it ;  and  we  shall  find  upon  a  diligent  examination 
of  the  papers  of  this  kind  that  it  is  prodigiously  various  and 
extensive.  He  scarcely  ever  descends  to  personal  satire,  and 
his  ridicule  of  certain  characters  in  life,  while  it  is  remark- 
ably striking,  is  so  gentle  that  persons  who  answer  to  the 
characters  must  read  him  with  pleasure.  A  wit  that  was  so 
copious  and  inexhaustible,  without  trespassing  against  good- 
nature or  offending  against  decency,  is  entitled  to  the  highest 
admiration  and  applause." 

Gosse  says,  "  His  wit  is  as  penetrating  as  a  perfume,"  and 
Thackeray  declares  that  ' '  Addison  wrote  his  papers  as  gayly  as 
though  he  were  going  out  for  a  holiday." 

"I  have  the  good  fortune  to  be  intimate  with  a  gentle- 
man remarkable  for  this  temper  [bashfulness]  who  has  an  inex- 
haustible source  of  wit  to  entertain  the  curious,  the  grave, 
the  hjamorous,  and  the  frolicsome.  .  .  .  You  discern  the 
brightness  of  his  mind  and  the  strength  of  his  judgment  ac- 
companied with  the  most  graceful  mirth.  In  a  word,  by  this 
enlivening  aid  he  is  whatever  is  polite,  instructive,  and  di- 
verting. He  was  above  all  other  men  in  that  talent  called 
humor." — Steele. 

"The  finest   critic,  the  finest  gentleman,  the   most  ten- 


104  ADDISON 

der  humorist  of  his  age.  .  .  .  He  throws  a  delightful 
gleam  of  love  and  laughter  upon  the  eccentricities  and  charac- 
teristic follies  of  individual  nature." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  The  essence  of  Addison's  humor  is  irony.  .  .  .  He 
ridicules  some  fashion  or  taste  by  a  perfectly  grave  and  simple 
description  of  its  object.  .  .  .  Charles  Lamb,  again,  has 
passages  which,  for  mere  delicacy  of  humor,  are  equal  to  any- 
thing in  Addison's  writings.  But  the  superiority  of  Addison 
consists  in  this,  that  he  expresses  the  humor  of  the  life  about 
him,  while  Lamb  is  driven  to  look  at  its  oddities  from  out- 
side."—  W.  J.  Courthope. 

"  His  humor  is  so  happily  diffused  as  to  give  the  grace  of 
novelty  to  domestic  scenes  and  daily  occurrences.  He  never 
outsteps  the  modesty  of  nature,  nor  raises  merriment  or  won- 
der by  the  violation  of  truth.  His  figures  neither  divert  by 
distortion  nor  amuse  by  aggravation.  ...  In  argument 
he  had  many  equals ;  but  his  humor  was  singular  and  match- 
less. Bigotry  itself  must  be  delighted  with  the  Tory  fox- 
hunter. ' ' — Johnson. 

• 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  Sir  Roger  is  landlord  to  the  whole  congregation,  he  keeps 
them  in  very  good  order,  and  will  allow  nobody  to  sleep  in  it 
[the  church]  besides  himself ;  for  if  by  chance  he  has  been  sur- 
prised into  a  short  nap  at  sermon,  upon  recovery  out  of  it  he 
stands  up  and  looks  about  him,  and  if  he  sees  anybody  else  nod- 
ding, either  wakes  them  himself  or  sends  his  servant  to  them."- 
The  Spectator. 

"  He  [Sir  Roger  de  Coverley]  has,  moreover,  bequeathed  to  the 
chaplain  a  very  pretty  tenement  with  good  lands  about  it.  It 
being  a  very  cold  day  when  he  made  his  will,  he  left  for  mourn- 
ing to  every  man  in  the  parish  a  great  frieze-coat  and  to  every 
woman  a  black  riding-hood." — The  Spectator. 

"  When  Sir  Roger  saw  Andromache's  obstinate  refusal  to  her 
lover's  importunities,  he  whispered  me  in  the  ear  that  he  was  sure 
that  she  would  never  marry  him ;  to  which  he  added,  with  a  more 


ADDISON  105 

than  ordinary  vehemence  :  '  You  can't  imagine,  sir,  what  it  is  to 
have  to  do  with  a  widow. '  Upon  Pyrrhus  his  threatening  afterward 
to  leave  her,  the  knight  shook  his  head,  and  muttered  to  himself  : 
'  Ay,  do  if  you  can.'  This  part  dwelt  so  much  upon  my  friend's 
imagination  that,  at  the  close  of  the  third  act,  as  I  was  thinking  of 
something  else,  he  whispered  in  my  ear  :  '  These  widows,  sir,  are 
the  most  perverse  creatures  in  the  world.  But  pray,'  says  he, 
'  you  that  are  a  critic,  is  the  play  according  to  your  dramatic 
rules,  as  you  call  them  ?  Should  your  people  in  tragedy  always 
talk  to  be  understood  ?  Why,  there  is  not  a  single  sentence  in 
this  play  that  I  do  not  know  the  meaning  of.'  "—Sir  Roger  at  the 
Theatre. 

"  As  I  was  walking  with  him  last  night,  he  asked  me  how  I  liked 
the  good  man  whom  I  have  just  mentioned  ;  and  without  staying 
for  my  answer  told  me  that  he  was  afraid  of  being  insulted  with 
Latin  and  Greek  at  his  own  table  ;  for  which  reason  he  desired  a 
particular  friend  of  his  at  the  University  to  find  him  a  clergyman 
rather  of  plain  sense  than  much  learning,  of  a  good  aspect,  a 
clear  voice,  a  sociable  temper,  and,  if  possible,  a  man  that  un- 
derstands a  little  of  backgammon.  .  .  .  '  At  his  first  settling 
with  me  I  made  him  a  present  of  all  the  good  sermons  which 
have  been  printed  in  English,  and  only  begged  of  him  that  every 
Sunday  he  would  pronounce  one  of  them  in  the  pulpit.  Accord- 
ingly he  has  digested  them  into  such  a  series  that  they  follow  one 
another  naturally,  and  make  a  continued  system  of  practical  di- 
vinity.' "—  The  Spectator. 

5.  Skill  in  Portraiture.— In  the  ability  to  seize  upon 
"the  fugitive  traits  of  some  popular  habit,  vice,  or  caprice, 
and  so  to  combine  these  in  an  imaginary  personage  that  we 
seem  to  be  reading  of  an  actual  living  being  of  like  feelings 
and  passions  with  ourselves,"  Addison  is  surpassed  only  by 
Shakespeare.  "That  delectable  creation,"  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley,  is  compared  by  Walpole  to  Falstaff.  Addison  is 
never  weary,  says  J.  R.  Green,  "  of  tracking  out  human 
character  into  its  shyest  recesses."  Sir  Roger  is  aptly  called 
by  one  critic  "  the  legitimate  precursor  of  Squire  Weston, 
Parson  Adams,  the  Man  of  Feeling,  and  Pickwick,"  and  by 


106  ADDISON 

another  "  a  perfectly  finished  picture  worthy  of  Cervantes  or 
Sir  Walter  Scott."  In  one  line  of  portraiture,  however,  Ad- 
dison  failed  ;  his  portrayal  of  female  character  is  neither  just 
nor  discriminating.  Thackeray  best  tells  the  reason  for  this 
lack  :  "  He  was  a  man's  man,  remember.  The  only  woman 
whom  he  did  know  he  didn't  write  about.  I  take  it  there 
would  not  have  been  much  humor  in  that  story." 

"  Addison  has  gained  himself  immortal  honor  by  his  man- 
ner of  filling  up  this  last  character  [Sir  Roger  de  Coverley]. 
Who  is  there  that  can  forget,  or  be  insensible  to,  the  inimitable 
nameless  traits  of  nature  and  of  old  English  character  in  it? 
to  his  unpretending  virtues  and  amiable  weaknesses ;  to  his 
modesty,  generosity,  hospitality,  and  eccentric  whims;  to 
his  respect  of  his  neighbors  and  the  affection  of  his  domes- 
tics; to  his  wayward,  hopeless,  secret  passion  for  his  fair 
enemy,  the  widow,  in  which  there  is  more  of  real  romance 
and  true  delicacy  than  in  a  thousand  tales  of  knight-errantry 
(we  perceive  the  hectic  flush  of  his  cheek,  the  faltering  of  his 
tongue  in  speaking  of  her  bewitching  airs  and  '  the  whiteness 
of  her  hand  ')  ;  to  the  havoc  he  makes  among  the  game  in 
his  neighborhood  ;  to  his  speech  from  the  bench,  to  show  the 
Spectator  what  is  thought  of  him  in  the  country  ;  to  his  un- 
willingness to  be  put  up  as  a  sign-post  and  his  having  his 
own  likeness  turned  into  the  Saracen's  head  ;  to  his  gentle 
reproof  of  the  baggage  of  a  gypsy  that  tells  him  he  has  a 
widow  in  his  line  of  life  ;  to  his  doubts  as  to  the  existence  of 
witchcraft  and  protection  of  a  reputed  witch ;  to  his  ac- 
count of  the  family  pictures  and  his  choice  of  a  chaplain  ; 
to  his  falling  asleep  at  church  and  his  reproof  of  John  Will- 
iams, as  soon  as  he  recovered  from  his  nap,  for  talking  in  ser- 
mon-time? .  .  .  The  characters  of  Will  Wimble  and  Will 
Honeycomb  are  not  a  whit  behind  their  friend  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley  in  delicacy  and  felicity.  The  delightful  simplicity 
and  good-humored  officiousness  in  the  one  are  set  off  by  the 
graceful  affectation  and  courtly  pretension  in  the  other.  How 


ADDISON  .       107 

long  since  I  first  became  acquainted  with  these  two  characters 
in  the  Spectator  !  What  old-fashioned  friends  they  seem,  and 
yet  I  am  not  tired  of  them,  like  so  many  other  friends,  nor 
they  of  me  !  How  airy  these  abstractions  of  the  poet's  pen 
streaming  over  the  dawn  of  our  acquaintance  with  human 
life !  How  they  glance  their  fairest  colors  on  the  prospect 
before  us  !  How  pure  they  remain  in  it  to  the  last,  like  the 
rainbow  in  the  evening  cloud,  which  the  rude  hand  of  time 
can  neither  soil  nor  dissipate  !  What  a  pity  that  we  cannot 
find  the  reality,  and  yet  if  we  did,  the  dream  would  be  over." 
— Hazlitt. 

"The  abundance  of  his  own  mind  left  him  little  in  need 
of  adventitious  sentiments ;  his  wit  always  could  suggest  what 
the  occasion  demanded.  He  had  read  with  critical  eyes  the 
important  volume  of  human  life,  and  knew  the  heart  of  man, 
from  the  depth  of  stratagem  to  the  surface  of  affectation.  As 
a  describer  of  life  and  manners,  he  must  be  allowed  to  stand 
perhaps  the  first  of  the  first  rank.  .  .  .  His  figures  neither 
divest  by  distortion  nor  amaze  by  aggravation.  .  .  .  He 
copies  life  with  so  much  fidelity  that  he  can  be  hardly  said  to 
invent.  .  .  .  His  exhibitions  have  an  air  so  much  origi- 
nal that  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  them  not  merely  the  product 
of  imagination. ' ' — Johnson. 

"  What  he  observed  he  had  the  art  of  communicating  in 
two  widely  different  ways.  He  could  describe  virtues,  vices, 
habits,  whims  as  well  as  Clarendon.  But  he  could  do  some- 
thing better.  He  could  call  human  beings  into  existence  and 
make  them  exhibit  themselves.  If  we  wish  to  find  anything 
more  vivid  than  Addison's  best  portraits,  we  must  go  either 
to  Shakespeare  or  Cervantes.  As  an  observer  of  life,  of  man- 
ners, of  all  shades  of  human  character,  he  stands  in  the  first 
class. ' ' — Macaulay. 

"The  figure  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  though  it  belongs  to 
a  by-gone  stage  of  society,  is  as  durable  as  human  nature  it- 
self, and,  while  language  lasts,  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the 


108         •  ADDISON 

colors  in  which  it  is  preserved  will  excite  the  same  kind  of 
pleasure.  Scarcely  below  the  portrait  of  the  good  knight 
will  be  ranked  the  character  of  his  friend  and  biographer,  the 
silent  spectator  of  men.  Addison  rescued  the  lineaments  of 
the  original  English  country  gentleman  and  kept  them  bright 
and  genuine  for  the  delight  of  posterity,  ere  their  individu- 
ality was  lost  in  the  uniformity  of  the  locomotive  age.  It  is 
surprising  that  features  so  delicately  pictured,  incidents  so 
unromantic,  and  sentiments  so  free  from  extravagance  should 
thus  survive  intact.  It  is  the  nicety  of  the  execution  and  the 
humor  of  the  character  that  preserves  it.  .  .  .  Addisori's 
delicate  and  true  hand  gave  the  character  of  Sir  Roger  color 
and  expression  and  therefore  unity  of  effect." — W.  J.  Court- 
hope. 

"  Addison's  greatest  achievement  is  universally  admitted 
to  be  the  character  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley.  Sir  Roger  is 
the  incarnation  of  Addison's  kindly  tenderness,  showing 
through  a  vein  of  delicate  persiflage." — Leslie  Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Will  Wimble  is  younger  brother  to  a  baronet,  and  descended 
of  the  ancient  family  of  the  Wimbles.  He  is  now  between  forty 
and  fifty  ;  but  being  bred  to  no  business  and  born  to  no  estate, 
he  generally  lives  with  his  older  brother  as  superintendent  of  his 
game.  He  hunts  a  pack  of  dogs  better  than  any  man  in  the 
country,  and  is  very  famous  for  finding  out  a  hare.  He  is  ex- 
tremely well  versed  in  all  the  little  handicrafts  of  an  idle  man. 
He  makes  a  May-fly  to  a  miracle,  and  furnishes  the  whole  country 
with  angle  rods.  As  he  is  a  good-natured,  officious  fellow,  and 
very  much  esteemed  on  account  of  his  family,  he  is  a  welcome 
guest  at  every  house,  and  keeps  up  a  good  correspondence  among 
all  the  gentlemen  about  him.  He  carries  a  tulip  root  in  his 
pocket  from  one  to  another,  or  exchanges  a  puppy  between  a 
couple  of  friends  that  live  in  the  opposite  sides  of  the  country. 
Will  is  a  particular  favorite  of  all  the  young  heirs,  whom  he 
frequently  obliges  with  a  net  that  he  has  weaved  or  a  setting  dog 


ADDISON  109 

that  he  has  made  [trained]  himself.  He  now  and  then  presents  a 
pair  of  garters  of  his  own  knitting  to  their  mothers  or  sisters,  and 
raises  a  great  deal  of  mirth  among  them  by  inquiring  as  often 
as  he  meets  them,  '  how  they  wear ! '  These  gentleman-like 
manufactures  and  obliging  little  humors  make  Will  the  darling 
of  the  country." — The  Spectator. 

"My  friend  Will  Honeycomb  values  himself  very  much  upon 
what  he  calls  the  knowledge  of  mankind,  which  has  cost  him 
many  disasters  in  his  youth  ;  for  Will  reckons  every  misfortune 
that  he  has  met  with  among  the  women  and  every  rencounter 
among  the  men  as  parts  of  his  education  ;  and  fancies  he  should 
never  have  been  the  man  he  is  had  not  he  broke  windows, 
knocked  down  constables,  disturbed  honest  people  with  his  mid- 
night serenades,  and  beat  up  a  lewd  woman's  quarters,  when  he 
was  a  young  fellow.  The  engaging  in  adventures  of  this  nature 
Will  calls  the  studying  of  mankind,  and  terms  his  knowledge  of 
the  town  the  knowledge  of  the  world.  Will  ingenuously  confesses 
that  for  half  his  life  his  head  ached  every  morning  with  reading 
of  men  overnight  ;  and  at  present  comforts  himself  under  certain 
pains  which  he  endures  from  time  to  time,  that  without  them  he 
could  not  have  been  acquainted  with  the  gallantries  of  the  age. 
This  Will  looks  upon  as  the  learning  of  a  gentleman,  and  regards 
all  other  kinds  of  science  as  the  accomplishments  of  one  whom 
he  calls  a  scholar,  a  bookish  man,  or  a  philosopher." — The  Spec- 
tator. 

"  I  had,  some  years  ago,  an  aunt  of  my  own,  by  name,  Mrs. 
Martha  Ironside,  who  would  never  marry  beneath  herself,  and  is 
supposed  to  have  died  a  maid  in  the  fourscorth  year  of  her  age. 
She  was  the  chronicle  of  our  family,  and  passed  away  the  greater 
part  of  the  last  forty  years  of  her  life  in  recounting  the  antiquity, 
marriages,  exploits,  and  alliances  of  the  Ironsides.  Mrs.  Martha 
conversed  generally  with  a  knot  of  old  virgins,  who  were  likewise 
of  good  families.  My  aunt  Martha  used  to  chide  me  very  fre- 
quently for  not  sufficiently  valuing  myself.  She  would  not  eat  a 
bit  all  dinner-time,  if,  at  an  invitation,  she  found  she  had  been 
seated  below  herself ;  and  would  frown  upon  me  for  an  hour 
together,  if  she  saw  me  give  place  to  any  man  under  a  bar- 
onet. ...  A  little  before  her  death  she  was  reciting  to  me 
the  history  of  my  forefathers  ;  but  dwelling  a  little  longer  than 
ordinary  upon  the  actions  of  Sir  Gilbert  Ironsides,  I  gave  an  un- 


I  TO  ADDISON 

fortunate  pish,  and  asked,  '  What  was  all  that  to  me  ? '  Upon 
which  she  retired  to  her  closet,  and  fell  a-scribbling  for  three  hours 
together,  in  which  time,  as  I  afterward  found,  she  struck  me  out 
of  her  will." — The  Spectator. 

6.  Conventionality— Formalism.— "His  morality, 
thoroughly  English,  always  crawls  among  commonplaces, 
discovering  no  principles,  making  no  deductions.  The  fine 
and  lofty  aspects  of  the  mind  are  wanting.  He  gives  inim- 
itable advice,  a  clear  watchword,  justified  by  what  happened 
yesterday,  useful  for  to-morrow.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing 
sublime  or  chimerical  in  the  end  which  he  sets  before  us ;  all 
is  practical,  that  is,  business-like  and  sensible  :  the  question  is, 
'  How  to  be  easy  here  and  happy  afterward."  .  .  .  The 
continuous  period  is  like  the  shears  of  the  Quintinie,  which 
crop  all  the  trees  round,  under  the  pretence  of  beautifying. 
This  is  why  there  is  a  coldness  and  monotony  in  Addison's 
style.  He  seems  to  be  listening  to  himself.  He  is  too  meas- 
ured and  correct.  .  .  .  He  has  his  rules  in  his  pocket, 
and  brings  them  out  for  everything.  .  .  .  His  Spectato r  is 
only  an  honest  man's  manual,  and  is  often  like  '  The  Complete 
Lawyer.'  It  is  practical,  its  aim  being  not  to  amuse  but  to 
instruct  us.  ...  He  thinks  of  the  future  life,  but  does 
not  forget  the  present ;  he  rests  virtue  on  interest  rightly  un- 
derstood. He  strains  no  principle  to  its  limits;  he  accepts 
them  all,  as  they  are  to  be  met  with  everywhere. 
What  a  store  he  has  of  resolutions  and  maxims  !  All  rapture, 
instinct,  inspiration,  and  caprice  are  abolished  or  disciplined. 
No  case  surprises  him  or  carries  him  away.  He  is  always 
ready  and  protected  ;  so  much  so  that  he  is  like  an  automaton. 
Argument  has  frozen  and  inveiled  him.  .  .  .  To  put 
calculation  at  every  stage  ;  such  is  the  morality  of  Addison 
and  of  England.  .  .  .  Underneath  his  morality  is  a  pair 
of  scales,  which  weighs  quantities  of  happiness.  He  stirs  him- 
self by  mathematical  computations  to  prefer  the  future  to  the 
present.  Thus  arises  this  religion,  a  product  of  melancholic 


ADDISON  1 1 1 

temperament  and  acquired  logic,  in  which  man,  a  sort  of  cal- 
culating Hamlet,  aspires  to  the  ideal  by  making  a  good  busi- 
ness of  it,  and  maintains  his  poetical  sentiments  by  financial 
calculations.  .  .  .  There  is  an  element  of  coarseness  in 
this  fashion  of  treating  divine  things,  and  we  like  still  less 
the  exactness  with  which  he  explains  God,  reducing  him  to 
a  mere  magnified  man.  .  .  .  The  sincerity  of  his  emo- 
tions makes  us  respect  even  his  catechetical  prescriptions." 
— Taine. 

"  Steele  seems  to  have  gone  into  his  closet  chiefly  to  set 
down  what  he  observed  out-of-doors.  Addison  seems  to  have 
spent  most  of  his  time  in  his  study,  and  to  have  spun  out  and 
wire-drawn  the  hints  which  he  borrowed  from  Steele,  or  took 
from  nature,  to  the  utmost.  .  .  .  The  humorous  descrip- 
tions of  Steele  resemble  loose  sketches  or  fragments  of  a 
comedy  ;  those  of  Addison  are  rather  comments  or  ingenious 
paraphrases  on  the  genuine  text." — Hazlitt. 

"  Addison  shrank  from  every  bold  and  every  profound  ex- 
pression as  from  an  offence  against  good-taste.  .  .  .  He 
durst  as  soon  have  danced  a  hornpipe  on  the  top  of  the 
'  Monument '  as  have  talked  of  a  '  rapturous  emotion. '  What 
would  he  have  said  ?  Why,  '  Sentiments  that  were  of  a  na- 
ture to  prove  agreeable  after  an  unusual  rate.'  " — De  Quincey. 

"  The  judicious  Mr.  Addison  had  the  effeminate  complais- 
ance to  soften  the  severity  of  his  dramatic  characters  so  as  to 
adapt  it  to  the  manners  of  the  age  ;  and  from  an  endeavor  to 
please,  quite  mined  a  masterpiece  of  its  kind." — Voltaire. 

"  Its  ['  Cato's  ']  pompous  monotony  was  taken  for  dignity, 
and  its  strict  adherence  to  the  critical  rules  then  accepted  was 
preferred  by  Addison's  contemporaries  to  the  truth  and  nature 
of  Shakespeare.  In  it  the  dramatic  unities — unity  of  place, 
unity  of  time,  and  unity  of  action — are  observed  with  a  com- 
pleteness that  leads  to  some  rather  ridiculous  results  ;  all  the 
characters  go  through  their  actions  and  their  speeches  with 
the  utmost  conventional  correctness." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 


112  ADDISON 

"In  all  those  parts  of  the  poem  ['  Cato ']  where  action 
and  not  ornament  is  demanded,  we  seem  to  perceive  the  work 
of  a  poet  who  was  constantly  thinking  what  his  characters 
ought  to  say  in  the  situation  rather  than  of  one  who  was 
actually  living  with  them  in  the  situation  itself." — W.  J. 
Courthope. 

"  Mr.  Addison  could  not  give  out  a  common  order  in  writ- 
ing from  his  endeavoring  always  to  word  it  too  finely." — 
Pope. 

"In  'Remarks  on  Italy'  the  comparative  absence  of 
earnest  poetical  feeling  is  manifest  throughout.  At  Venice 
he  was  not  haunted  by  '  the  gentle  lady  wedded  to  the  Moor,' 
nor  does  the  noble  Portia  rise  to  view." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  We  delight  in  his  company  so  greatly  that  we  do  not  pause 
to  reflect  that  the  inventor  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  and  of 
Will  Honeycomb  had  not  half  of  the  real  comic  force  of  Far- 
quhar  or  Van  Brugh,  nor  so  much  as  that  of  the  flashing  wit 
of  Congreve.  Human  nature,  however,  is  superior  to  the 
rules,  and  Addison  stands  higher  than  those  more  original 
writers  by  merit  of  the  reasonableness,  the  good  sense,  the 
wholesome  humanity,  that  animates  his  work.  He  is  classic 
while  they  are  always  a  little  way  over  on  the  barbaric  side  of 
perfection.  .  .  .  The  air  of  good  breeding  at  which  he 
always  aimed,  .  .  .  the  excessive  and  meticulous  civility 
of  Addison. ' ' — Edmund  Gosse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  story  of  Solomon's  choice  does  not  only  instruct  us  in 
that  point  of  history,  but  furnishes  out  a  fine  moral  to  us,  namely, 
that  he  who  applies  his  heart  to  wisdom  does,  at  the  same  time, 
take  the  most  proper  method  for  gaining  long  life,  riches,  and 
reputation,  which  are  very  often  not  only  the  rewards  but  the  ef- 
fects of  wisdom." — The  Guardian. 

"  It  is  the  great  art  and  secret  of  Christianity,  if  I  may  use 
that  phrase,  to  manage  our  actions  to  the  best  advantage  and  di- 
rect them  in  such  a  manner  that  everything  we  do  may  turn  to 


ADDISON  1 1 3 

account  at  that  great  day  when  everything  we  have  done  will  be 
set  before  us." — The  Spectator. 

"There  is  nothing  of  greater  importance  to  us  than  thus  dil- 
igently to  sift  our  thoughts  and  examine  all  those  dark  recesses 
of  the  mind,  if  we  would  establish  our  souls  in  such  a  solid  and 
substantial  virtue  as  will  turn  to  account  in  that  great  day  when 
it  must  stand  the  test  of  infinite  wisdom  and  justice." — The  Spec- 
tator. 

"  I  never  could  have  a  taste  for  old  bricks  and  rubbish,  nor 
would  trouble  myself  about  the  ruins  of  Augustus's  Palace  so  long 
as  I  could  see  the  Vatican." — Of  Ancient  Medals. 

11  Upon  laying  together  all  particulars  and  examining  all  the 
moles  and  marks  by  which  the  mother  used  to  describe  the  child 
when  he  was  first  missing,  the  boy  proved  to  be  the  son  of  the  mer- 
chant, whose  heart  had  so  unaccountably  melted  at  the  sight  of 
him.  The  lad  was  very  well  pleased  to  find  a  father  who  was  so 
rich  and  likely  to  leave  him  a  good  estate  ;  the  father,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  not  a  little  delighted  to  see  a  son  return  to  him  whom 
he  had  given  up  for  lost,  with  such  a  strength  of  constitution, 
sharpness  of  understanding,  and  skill  in  languages." — Sir  Roger 
and  the  Gypsies. 


7.  Verbal  Precision  —  Fastidiousness.  —  Addison 
has  been  generally  criticised  for  carrying  this  quality  to  ex- 
cess— for  "  confounding  correctness  with  mechanism."  Haz- 
litt  prefers  "  Steele's  occasional  selection  of  beautiful  poetical 
passages,  without  any  affectation  of  analyzing  their  beauties, 
to  Addison's  fine-spun  theories."  The  one  great  lack  in 
Addison's  style  is  the  element  of  deep  feeling.  All  is  clear, 
correct,  and  elegant,  but  there  is  an  absence  of  that  element, 
so  noticeable  in  Steele,  that  takes  hold  of  the  heart  of  the 
reader.  Addison  addresses,  almost  without  exception,  the 
purely  intellectual  side  of  our  natures.  He  abounds,  says 
Taine,  in  "commercial  common-sense  and  business-like  reso- 
lutions and  maxims.  He  explains  God  and  describes  Heav- 
en." He  comes  "with  weights  and  figures  into  the  thick 
of  human  passions,  to  ticket  them  and  classify  them  like  bales ; 
8 


1 14  ADDISON 

to  tell  the  public  that  the  inventory  is  complete,  and  to  lead 
them  by  the  mere  virtue  of  statistics  to  honor  and  duty." 

"The  mere  choice  and  arrangement  of  his  words  would 
have  sufficed  to  make  his  essays  classical.  For  never,  not 
even  by  Dryden,  not  even  by  Temple,  had  the  English  lan- 
guage been  written  with  such  sweetness,  grace,  and  facility." 
— Macaulay. 

"  He  had  accepted  the  public  as  his  judges  j  and  he  writes 
as  if  some  critical  representative  of  the  public  were  at  his 
elbow,  putting  to  the  test  of  reason  every  sentiment  and  every 
expression.  Wharton  tells  us,  in  his  '  Essay  on  Pope,'  that 
Addison  was  so  fastidious  in  composition  that  he  would  often 
stop  the  press  to  alter  a  preposition  or  conjunction ;  and  this 
evidence  is  corroborated  in  a  very  curious  and  interesting  man- 
ner by  the  MS.  of  some  of  Addison's  essays,  discovered  by  Mr. 
Sykes  Campbell  in  1858.  A  sentence  in  one  of  the  papers 
on  the  '  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination  '  shows,  by  the  vari- 
ous stages  through  which  it  passed  before  its  form  seemed 
satisfactory  to  the  writer,  what  nice  attention  he  gave  to 
the  balance,  rhythm,  and  lucidity  of  his  periods." — W.  J. 
Courthope. 

"  The  select  world  refines  language.  It  does  not  suffer  the 
risks  and  approximations  of  extempore  and  inexperienced 
speaking.  It  requires  a  knowledge  of  style,  like  a  knowledge 
of  external  forms.  It  will  have  exact  words  to  express  the 
fine  shades  of  thought  and  measured  words  to  preclude  of- 
fensive or  extreme  impressions.  It  wishes  for  developed 
phrases,  which,  presenting  the  same  idea  under  several  aspects, 
impress  it  easily  upon  the  desultory  mind.  It  demands 
harmonious  words,  which,  presenting  a  known  idea  in  a  smart 
form,  may  introduce  it  in  a  lively  manner  to  its  desultory 
imagination.  Addison  gives  it  all  that  it  desires  ;  his  writ- 
ings are  the  pure  source  of  classic  style  ;  men  never  spoke 
better  in  England.  .  .  .  Throughout  we  have  precise 
contrasts,  which  serve  only  for  clearness,  and  are  not  too  pro- 


ADDISON  115 

longed —  .  .  .  harmonious  periods,  in  which  the  sounds 
flow  into  one  another  with  the  diversity  and  sweetness  of  a 
quiet  stream." — Taine. 

"  There  is  a  studied  absence  of  all  such  features  of  style  as 
redundance,  inversion,  and  circumlocution.  There  is  very 
little  verbal  tinsel  for  the  sake  of  effect  and  no  desire  to  con- 
ceal under  a  veil  of  words.  It  is  in  point  here  to  note  that 
verbal  precision  was  carried  to  an  unhealthful  extreme  by 
Addison  and  his  school.  He  was  as  fastidious  in  prose  as 
Pope  and  Dryden  were  in  poetry.  .  .  .  Verbal  preci- 
sion overreaches  itself  in  Addison.  ...  It  was  indeed 
the  error  of  the  age.  ...  He  was  careful  to  a  fault." — 
T.  IV.  Hunt. 

"Addison  was  excessively  fastidious  in  his  choice  of  words, 
laboriously  polishing  and  balancing  his  phrases  until  they  rep- 
resented the  first  literary  art  at  his  disposal,  until  the  rhythm 
was  perfect,  the  sentence  as  light  and  bright  as  possible,  and 
the  air  of  good  breeding,  at  which  he  always  aimed,  success- 
fully caught.  He  was  probably  the  earliest  English  author  of 
prose,  except,  perhaps,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  who  aimed  delib- 
erately at  beauty  of  execution  and  treated  the  pedestrian  form 
with  as  much  respect  as  though  it  had  been  verse. 
Addison's  share  in  completing  the  development  of  our  lan- 
guage was  very  considerable  —  he  smoothed  down  English 
phraseology  to  an  almost  perilous  extent ;  and  Swift,  who  ad- 
mitted that  the  Spectator  was  very  pretty,  thought  that  Ad- 
dison's tendency  was  too  feminine." — Edmund  Gosse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  True  happiness  is  of  a  retired  nature  and  an  enemy  to  pomp 
and  noise  ;  it  arises  in  the  first  place  from  the  enjoyment  of  one's 
self  and  in  the  next  from  the  friendship  and  conversation  of  a  few 
select  companions  ;  it  loves  shade  and  solitude,  and  naturally 
haunts  groves  and  fountains,  fields  and  meadows  ;  in  short,  it 
feels  everything  it  wants  within  itself,  and  receives  no  addi- 


Il6  ADDISON 

tion  from  multitudes  of  witnesses  and  spectators." — The  Spec- 
tator. 

"  A  good  intuition  joined  to  a  good  action  gives  it  its  proper 
force  and  efficacy  ;  joined  to  an  evil  action,  extenuates  its  malig- 
nity, and  in  some  cases  may  take  it  wholly  away  ;  and  joined  to 
an  indifferent  action,  turns  it  to  a  virtue,  and  makes  it  meritori- 
ous as  far  as  human  actions  can  be  so." — The  Spectator. 

"  Since  I  have  just  mentioned  the  word  enemies,  I  must  explain 
myself  so  far  as  to  acquaint  my  reader  that  I  mean  only  the  in- 
significant party  zealots  on  both  sides  ;  men  of  such  poor  narrow 
souls  that  they  are  not  capable  of  thinking  on  anything  but  with 
an  eye  to  Whig  or  Tory.  During  the  course  of  this  paper  I  have 
been  accused  by  these  despicable  wretches  of  trimming,  time- 
serving, personal  reflection,  secret  hate,  and  the  like." — The 
Spectator. 


STEELE,  1675-1729 

Biographical  Outline. — Richard  Steele,  born  of  Eng- 
lish parents  in  Dublin,  March  12,  1675  ;  father  secretary  to 
the  Duke  of  Ormond,  then  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland ;  Steele 
is  placed  in  the  Charterhouse  School,  London,  through  the 
influence  of  Ormond ;  he  forms  there  a  close  friendship  with 
Addison;  enters  Merton  College,  Oxford,  in  1692,  and  re- 
mains three  years  ;  becomes  enamored  of  a  military  life,  fails 
to  secure  a  commission,  and  enlists  as  a  private  in  the  Horse- 
Guards  ;  is  disinherited  by  a  rich  relative  for  this  step ;  is  soon 
promoted  to  a  captaincy ;  plunges  into  a  life  of  fashionable  dis- 
sipation and  extravagance;  as  "  a  check  on  his  irregularities — 
a  self-monitor  " — he  writes  "  The  Christian  Hero,"  published 
in  1701  ;  turns  his  talent  toward  comedy,  and  produces,  suc- 
cessively, from  1701  to  1704,  "The  Funeral,"  "  The  Ten- 
der Husband,"  "The  Lying  Lovers ;"  is  appointed  Gazetteer 
in  1705,  through  Addison's  influence;  obtains  an  estate  in 
Barbadoes  at  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  and  adds  to  his  fort- 
une by  marrying  "Molly  Scurlock ;  "  lives  extravagantly, 
and  is  always  familiar  with  "duns  and  bailiffs,  misery,  folly, 
and  repentance;"  establishes  The  Tatter,  April  12,  1709; 
is  aided  by  Addison ;  the  Tatler  is  discontinued  January  2, 
1710-11,  and  the  Spectator  is  established  March  i,  1710-11  ; 
the  Spectator  is  discontinued  in  December,  1712,  and  the 
Guardian  is  established  in  March,  1713,  and  is  continued 
through  175  numbers;  later  Steele  establishes  the  English- 
man (57  numbers),  the  Lover,  the  Reader,  the  Plebeian,  and 
the  Theatre  ;  of  271  Tatlers,  Steele  wrote  188;  of  635  Spec- 
tators, 240  ;  of  175  Guardians,  82  ;  he  is  assailed  by  Swift  ; 
enters  Parliament,  writes  a  pamphlet,  "The  Crisis,"  reflect- 

117 


Il8  STEELE 

ing  on  the  Protestantism  of  the  government,  and  is  expelled 
from  Parliament  therefor  in  1714;  he  holds  several  minor 
offices  under  George  I.,  and  is  again  elected  to  Parliament ; 
in  1718  he  publishes  "  The  Fishpool,"  and  in  1719  opposes 
the  Peerage  Bill,  and  thus  incurs  the  anger  of  Addison,  who 
dies  before  they  become  reconciled ;  Steele  opposes  the 
South-Sea  scheme  in  1720,  publishes  "The  Conscious  Lov- 
ers" (a  comedy)  in  1722,  and  dies  in  Wales,  September  i, 
1729. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY    ON    STEELE'S   STYLE. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  "  The  English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury." London,  1886,  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  192-227. 

Minto,  W.,  "  English  Prose  Literature."  Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 
392-400. 

Dobson,  A.,  "English  Writers"  (Andrew  Lang).  New  York,  1886, 
Appleton,  225-233. 

Aitken,  G.  A.,  "Life  of  Richard  Steele."  Boston,  1889,  Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.,  2  :  343-345. 

Montgomery,  R.,  "  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  Steele,"  etc.  Edinburgh, 
1865,  Nimmo,  2  :  295-309. 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "The  Round  Table."    London,  1871,  Bell  &  Daldy,  9-14. 

Drake,  N.,  "Essays."     London,  1885,  Sharpe,  I  :  185-291. 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."  London,  1884,  G.  Bell 
&  Daldy,  127-128. 

Gosse,  E.,  "  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  Literature."  New 
York,  1889,  Macmillan,  186-192. 

Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1883, 
Appleton,  175-183. 

Welsh,  A.  H.,  "The  Development  of  English  Literature."  Chicago, 
1884,  Griggs,  2  :  76-80. 

Dennis,  J.,  "  Studies  in  English  Literature."  London,  1876,  Stanford, 
148-191. 

Courthope,  W.  J.,  "Joseph  Addison."  New  York,  1884,  Harper,  85- 
109. 

Chalmers,  A.,  "British  Essayists."  Boston,  1856,  Little  &  Co.,  Pref- 
ace. 

Friswell,  J.  H.,  "Essays."  London,  1880,  Love  &  Manta,  114  &  299- 
300. 


STEELE 

Bascom,  J.,  "  The  Philosophy  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1874, 
Putnam,  171-174. 

Craik.  G.  L.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1869,  Scrib- 
ner,  248-250. 

Macaulay,  T.  B. ,  "  Miscellaneous  Works."  New  York,  1880,  Harper, 
3  :  85  and  v.  index. 

Kingsley,  H.,  "  Fireside  Studies."  London,  1876,  Chatto  &  Windus, 
i :  1-128. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 269-273. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1875, 
Holt,  v. ,  index. 

Russell,  W.  C.,  "  Book  of  Authors."     London,  n.  d.,  Warne,  147-149 

&I55- 
L'Estrange,  A.  G.,    "  History  of  English    Humor."     London,   1878, 

Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :  62-83. 
Tuckerman,   H.   T.,  "Biographical  Essays."     Boston,    1857,  Phillips, 

Sampson  &  Co.,  405-411. 

Morley,  H.,  Spectator.     London,  n.  d.,  Routledge,  Preface. 
North  American  Review,  108  :  78-95  (Tuckerman)  ;    46  :  341-372  (W. 

E.  Channing). 

Quarterly  Review,  96  :   509-568  (J.  Forster). 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  99  :  726-746. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  59  :  127-129  (Austin  Dobson). 
New  Monthly  Magazine,  161  :  633-656  (Converse). 
Cornhill  Magazine,  34  :  408-426  (Dennis). 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  7  :  336-344  (C.  C.  Clarke). 
Contemporary  Review,  56  :  503-515  (Dobson). 
Dial,  10  :  249-252  (Richards). 
Colburrf  s  Magazine,  161  :  633-656. 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  15  :  651-656  (Tuckerman). 
Spectator,  62  :  301-302. 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Colloquial  Ease  —  Companionship.  —  "Mon- 
taigne, whom  I  have  proposed  to  consider  as  the  father  of  this 
kind  of  personal  authorship  among  the  moderns,  in  which  the 
reader  is  admitted  behind  the  curtain,  and  sits  down  with  the 
writer  in  his  gown  and  slippers,  was  a  most  magnanimous  and 
undisguised  egotist ;  but  Isaac  Bickerstaff,  Esq.  was  the  more 


120  STEELE 

disinterested  gossip  of  the  two.  The  English  journalist  good 
naturedly  lets  you  into  the  secret  both  of  his  own  affairs  and 
those  of  his  neighbors.  A  young  lady,  on  the  other  side  oi 
Temple  Bar,  cannot  be  seen  at  her  glass  for  half  a  day  to- 
gether, but  Mr.  Bickerstaff  takes  due  notice  of  it ;  and  he 
has  the  first  intelligence  of  the  symptoms  of  the  belle  passion 
appearing  in  any  young  gentleman  at  the  west  end  of  town. 
Steele's  papers  in  the  Tatler  are  more  like  the  re- 
marks which  occur  in  sensible  conversation  and  less  like  a 
lecture.  .  .  .  Steele  seems  to  have  gone  into  his  closet 
chiefly  to  set  down  what  he  observed  out  of  doors.  Addison 
seems  to  have  spent  most  of  his  time  in  his  study." — Hazlitt. 

"  The  originator  of  the  social  element  in  English  liter- 
ature," says  Montgomery,  "  was  Richard  Steele.  The  idea  of 
a  colloquial  critic  and  censor  first  found  adequate  illustration 
in  his  pen."  Another  critic  calls  him  "more  human  and  less 
bookish  than  any  other  writer  of  the  eighteenth  century,"  and 
adds :  .  .  .  "  His  essays  are  more  like  the  gossip  of  a  friend 
than  formal  literature.  He  is  a  man  who  puts  us  into  good 
humor  with  ourselves."  Since  Steele's  day  this  element  of 
"  personal  authorship"  has  been  a  well-defined  feature  of  the 
style  of  nearly  every  famous  English  essayist.  Steele,  like 
Montaigne,  really,  therefore,  inaugurated  a  new  method  of 
composition. 

"  The  great  charm  of  Steele's  writing  is  its  naturalness.  He 
wrote  so  quickly  and  carelessly  that  he  was  forced  to  make 
the  reader  his  confidant  and  had  not  time  to  deceive  him. 
He  had  a  small  share  of  book-learning  but  a  vast  acquaintance 
with  the  world.  He  had  known  men  and  taverns.  He  had 
lived  with  gownsmen,  with  troopers,  with  gentlemen  Ushers 
of  the  Court,  with  men  and  women  of  fashion,  with  authors 
and  wits,  with  the  inmates  of  the  sponging-houses,  and  with 
the  frequenters  of  all  the  clubs  and  coffee-houses  in  the  town. 
He  was  liked  in  all  company  because  he  liked  it ;  and  you 
liked  to  see  his  enjoyment  as  you  like  to  see  the  glee  of  a  box- 


STEELE  121 

ful  of  children  at  the  pantomime.  He  was  not  of  those  lonely 
ones  of  the  earth  whose  greatness  obliged  them  to  be  solitary  ; 
on  the  contrary,  he  admired,  I  think,  more  than  any  other 
man  who  ever  wrote ;  and,  full  of  hearty  applause  and  sym- 
pathy, he  wins  upon  you  by  calling  you  to  share  his  delight 
and  good  humor.  His  laugh  rings  through  the  whole  house. 
He  must  have  been  invaluable  at  a  tragedy,  and  have  cried  as 
much  as  the  most  tender  young  lady  in  the  boxes." — Thack- 
eray. 

"  .  .  .  If  we  have  read  Steele  much,  and  turn  to 
him  yet  again,  every  new  reading  seems  more  like  an  act 
of  meditation  or  memory  than  receiving  another's  thoughts. 
We  do  not  say  a  word  to  ourselves  about  its  merits.  All 
that  we  are  conscious  of  is  a  succession  of  familiar,  agree- 
able images  which  we  begin  to  value  as  part  of  ourselves 
[He  is]  an  early  companion,  who  is  so  visible  and 
intelligible  in  every  word  that  he  is  at  our  side  and  talking 
with  us.  Happily,  Steele  never  writes  as  if  he  had  a  lite- 
rary character  to  support,  or  indeed  any  character  but  that  of 
the  good  old  gentleman  who  has  taken  our  morals  into  keep- 
ing .  .  .  — an  easy,  natural  humor  which  never  quite 
runs  over  and  never  loses  its  charm.  .  .  .  There  is,  how- 
ever, something  better  than  grace  and  polish  to  denote  his 
common  manner ;  we  mean  his  familiar  colloquial  ease  and 
directness.  .  .  .  He  has  a  method  of  stating  things  which 
the  reader  would  pronounce  the  same  in  which  they  would 
occur  to  himself,  and  which  at  once  makes  him  a  party  in  the 
matter,  and  puts  the  writer  quite  out  of  consideration  for 
the  time." — W.  E.  Channing. 

"  He  was,  indeed,  far  more  of  a  companion  than  a  scholar. 
It  was  by  virtue  not  so  much  of  the  finish  as  the  free- 
dom of  his  style  that  Steele  won  the  town.  .  .  .  The 
most  felicitous  of  Steele's  essays  are  colloquial  without  any 
loss  of  dignity.  Writing  became  more  conversational  and 
talking  more  finished.  ...  Sir  Richard's  easy  temper 


122  STEELE 

and  frank  companionship  lowered  his  class-Mentor  from  stilts, 
and  promoted  his  access  to  common  readers." — H.  T.  Tuck- 
erman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  At  fifteen  I  was  sent  to  the  university  and  stayed  there  for 
some  time  ;  but  a  drum  passing  by,  being  a  lover  of  music,  I 
listed  myself  for  a  soldier."— The  Tatler. 

"  After  this  my  reader  will  not  be  .surprised  to  hear  the  account 
which  I  am  about  to  give  of  a  club  of  my  own  contemporaries, 
among  whom  I  pass  two  or  three  hours  every  evening.  This  I 
look  upon  as  taking  my  first  nap  before  I  go  to  bed." — The  Tatler. 

"  But  I  must  turn  my  present  discourse  to  what  is  of  yet  greater 
regard  to  me  than  the  care  of  my  writings ;  that  is  to  say,  the 
preservation  of  a  lady's  heart.  Little  did  I  think  I  should  ever 
have  business  of  this  kind  on  my  hands  more ;  but,  as  little  as 
anyone  who  knows  me  would  believe  it,  there  is  a  lady  at  this 
time  who  professes  to  love  me." — The  Tatler. 

"  Nay,  I  have  known  a  young  fellow  who  was  regularly  bred 
an  attorney,  and  was  a  very  expert  one  till  he  had  an  estate  fallen 
to  him.  The  moment  that  happened,  he  who  could  before  prove 
the  next  land  he  cast  his  eye  upon  his  own,  and  was  so  sharp 
that  a  man  at  first  sight  would  give  him  a  small  sum  for  a  general 
receipt  whether  he  owed  him  anything  or  not ;  such  a  one,  I  say, 
have  I  seen,  coming  upon  an  estate,  forget  all  his  diffidence  of 
mankind  and  become  the  most  manageable  thing  breathing." — 
The  Tatler. 

2.  Minuteness — Realism. — "The  social  sketches  of 
the  Tatler  must  always  retain  a  certain  interest.  The  whole 
of  the  time  is  mirrored  in  its  pages.  We  see  the  theatre  with 
Betterton  and  Bracegirdle  on  the  stage  ;  we  see  the  side-box 
bowing  from  its  inmost  rows  at  the  advent  of  the  radiant 
Cynthia  of  the  minute ;  we  see  the  church,  with  its  high 
pews  and  its  hour-glass  by  the  pulpit ;  we  hear,  above  the  rus- 
tle of  the  fans  and  the  coughing  of  open-breasted  beaux,  the 
sonorous  periods  of  Burnett  or  Atterbury ;  we  scent  the  fra- 
grance of  bergamot  and  lavender  and  Hungary-water.  We 


STEELE  123 

follow  the  gilded  chariots  moving  slowly  round  the  ring  in 
Hyde  Park;  we  take  the  air  in  the  Mall  with  the  bucks  and 
pretty  fellows ;  we  trudge  after  the  fine  lady  bound  in  her 
glass  chair  upon  her  interminable  '  how-dees ; '  we  listen  to 
the  politicians  at  White's  or  the  Cocoa- Tree  ;  ...  we 
call  for  the  latest  Tatler  at  Morphew's  by  Stationer's  Hall. 
It  is  not  true  that  Queen  Anne  is  dead  ;  we  are  living  in  her 
very  reign ;  and  the  Victorian  Era,  with  its  steam  and  its 
socialism,  its  electric  lights  and  its  local  option,  has  floated 
away  from  us  like  a  dream.  .  .  .  Steele,  with  his  eye  on 
the  object,  sketches  what  he  sees  among  his  fellows.  He  is 
sensitive  about  his  claim  to  scholarship ;  but  his  range  of  read- 
ing is  restricted,  and  his  real  book  is  human  nature." — An- 
drew Lang. 

"  In  reading  the  pages  of  the  Tatler,  we  seem  as  if  sud- 
denly transported  to  the  age  of  Queen  Anne,  of  toupees  and 
full-bottomed  periwigs.  .  .  .  We  distinguish  the  dappers, 
the  smarts,  and  the  pretty  fellows,  as  they  pass  by  Mr.  Lilly's 
shop  windows  in  the  Strand  ;  we  are  introduced  to  Betterton 
and  Mrs.  Oldfield  behind  the  scenes ;  are  made  familiar  with 
the  persons  and  performances  of  Will  Estcourt  or  Tom  Durfey. 
.  We  are  surprised  with  the  rustling  of  hoops  and  the 
glittering  of  paste  buckles. ' ' — Hazlitt. 

"As  we  read  in  these  delightful  volumes  of  the  Tatler  and 
Spectator,  the  past  age  returns,  the  England  of  our  ancestors 
is  revivified.  The  May-pole  rises  in  the  Strand  again  in 
London  ;  the  churches  are  thronged  with  daily  worshippers ; 
the  beaux  are  gathering  in  the  coflee-houses,  the  gentry  are 
going  to  the  Drawing-room,  the  ladies  are  thronging  to  the 
toy-shops,  the  chair-men  are  jostling  in  the  streets,  the  foot- 
men are  running  with  links  before  the  chariots  or  fighting 
around  the  theatre  doors.  In  the  country,  I  see  the  young 
Squire  riding  to  Eton  with  his  servants  behind  him,  and 
Will  Wimble,  the  friend  of  the  family,  to  see  him  safe."  — 
Thackeray. 


124  STEELE 

"There  are  many  points  of  view  in  which  these  'essays' 
have  an  interest  at  the  present  day.  .  .  .  They  are  not 
so  properly  a  history  as  a  set  of  pictures  of  the  times.  .  . 
They  raise  the  veil  of  a  hundred  years  and,  by  a  kind  of 
magic,  show  us  the  whole  of  daily  English  city  life  at  that 
period ;  the  men  and  their  costumes,  the  professions,  the 
theatres,  the  trades,  the  interior  of  private  houses,  the  prevail- 
ing notions  respecting  education  and  criticism.  We  have 
every  condition  of  life,  every  pursuit,  and  almost  every  kind 
of  an  opinion,  conversation,  tastes,  fashions,  follies,  vices. 
Till  we  think  a  little  of  the  subject,  we  shall  have  no  concep- 
tion of  the  minuteness  and  extent  of  information  which  these 
papers  give  us.  ...  Here  is  illusion  produced  by  realities, 
and  not  an  idea  of  reality  created,  as  in  fine  romances,  by 
animating  descriptions  and  actions,  and  where  our  warmed 
imaginations  are  made  to  do  half  the  work  for  the  author. 
Steele's  characters  are  not  sketches.  They  are  genuine  living 
men  and  women.  We  know  them  and  their  manner  of  life. 
We  are  prepared  for  all  they  have  to  say." — IV.  E.  Channing. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Upon  the  mantle-tree  stood  a  pot  of  lambative  electuary, 
with  a  stick  of  liquorice,  and  near  it  a  phial  of  rose-water  and 
powder  of  tutty.  Upon  the  table  lay  a  pipe  filled  with  betony 
and  colt's-foot,  a  roll  of  wax-candle,  a  silver  spitting-pot,  and  a 
Seville  orange." — Two  Old  Ladies. 

11  Whereas  Bridget  Howd'ye,  late  servant  to  the  Lady  Fardin- 
gale,  a  short,  thick,  lively,  hard-favoured  wench  of  about  twenty- 
nine  years  of  age,  her  eyes  small  and  bleared,  her  nose  very 
broad  at  bottom  and  turning  up  at  the  end,  her  mouth  wide  and 
lips  of  an  unusual  thickness,  two  teeth  out  before,  the  rest  black 
and  uneven,  the  tip  of  her  left  ear  being  of  a  mouse-color,  her 
voice  loud  and  shrill,  quick  of  speech,  and  something  of  a  Welsh 
accent,  withdrew  herself  on  Wednesday  last  from  her  lady's 
dwelling-house,  and  with  the  help  of  her  consorts,  carried  off  the 
following  goods  of  her  said  lady,  viz  :  [here  follow  two  pages  of 
the  names  of  articles  stolen]." — The  Tatler. 


STEELE  125 

"  When  I  was  a  middle-aged  man,  there  were  many  societies 
of  ambitious  young  men  in  England,  who,  in  their  pursuits  after 
fame,  were  every  night  employed  in  roasting  porters,  smoking 
cobblers,  knocking  down  watchmen,  overturning  constables, 
breaking  windows,  blackening  sign-posts,  and  the  like  immortal 
enterprises,  that  dispersed  their  reputation  throughout  the  whole 
kingdom." — The  Tatler. 

3.  Humanity — Sympathy. — "  There  may  have  been 
wiser,  stronger,  greater  men.  But  many  a  strong  man  would 
have  been  stronger  for  a  touch  of  Steele's  indulgent  sympathy ; 
many  a  great  man  has  wanted  his  genuine  largeness  of  heart ; 
many  a  wise  man  might  learn  something  from  his  deep  and 
wide  humanity.  His  virtues  revealed  his  frailties.  .  .  . 
For  words  which  the  heart  finds  when  the  head  is  seeking ; 
for  phrases  glowing  with  the  white-heat  of  a  generous  emotion; 
for  sentences  which  throb  and  tingle  with  a  manly  pity  or 
courageous  indignation,  we  must  turn  to  the  essays  ofSteele." 
— Andrew  Lang. 

"  It  is  obvious  that  the  social  tone  of  the  Spectator  is  as 
much  owing  to  Steele  as  its  grace  and  humor  are  to  Addison. 
If  the  one  was  a  fine  scholar,  the  other  was  a  most  agreeable 
gentleman  ;  if  the  one  was  correct,  the  other  was  genial ;  if 
the  one  had  reliable  tastes,  the  other  had  noble  impulses — so 
that  between  them  there  was  a  beautiful  representative  hu- 
manity."— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

' '  When  Addison  was  so  delicately  weighing  and  polishing 
his  sentences,  Steele  was  pouring  out  what  he  saw  or  what  he 
felt.  When  he  preaches,  as  he  is  very  apt  to  do,  we  fall  to 
'  nodding  in  his  face.'  But  we  wake  again  when  he  returns  to 
the  subject  he  knows  best — the  shifting  pictures  of  human 
life,  with  its  hopes  and  disappointments,  its  laughter  and  its 
tears.  .  .  .  His  style  takes  fire,  '  the  motion  doth  dilate 
the  flame,'  and  Steele  becomes  a  great  writer." — Edmund 
Gosse. 

"  Steele's  papers  are  easily  distinguished   to  this  day  by 


126  STEELE 

their  pure  humanity,  springing  from  the  kindness  and  the 
gentleness  of  his  heart." — Coleridge. 

"  It  may  be  that  he  was  a  more  negligent  writer  than  Addi- 
son  ;  but  the  genuineness  of  his  feelings  frequently  carries  him 
farther." — Austin.  Dobson. 

"  He  has  a  relish  for  beauty  and  goodness  wherever  he 
meets  it.  He  admired  Shakespeare  affectionately,  and  more 
than  any  other  man  of  his  time,  a^id,  according  to  his  gener- 
ous, expansive  nature,  called  upon  all  his  company  to  like  what 
he  liked  himself.  He  did  not  damn  with  faint  praise;  he 
was  in  the  world  and  of  it ;  and  his  enjoyment  of  life  presents 
the  strangest  contrast  to  Swift's  savage  indignation  and  Ad- 
dison's  lonely  serenity.  .  .  .  Dick  set  about  almost  all 
the  undertakings  of  his  life  with  inadequate  means ;  and,  as 
he  took  and  furnished  a  house  with  the  most  generous  inten- 
tions toward  his  friends,  the  most  tender  gallantry  toward  his 
wife,  and  with  this  only  drawback,  that  he  had  not  where- 
withal to  pay  the  rent  when  quarter-day  came — so,  in  his  life, 
he  proposed  to  himself  the  most  magnificent  schemes  of  virt- 
ue, forbearance,  public  and  private  good,  and  the  advance- 
ment of  his  own  and  the  national  religion  ;  but  when  he  had 
to  pay  for  these  articles — so  difficult  to  purchase  and  so  costly 
to  maintain — poor  Dick's  money  was  not  forthcoming ;  and 
when  Virtue  called  with  her  little  bill,  Dick  made  a  shuffling 
excuse  that  he  could  not  see  her  that  morning,  having  a  head- 
ache from  being  tipsy  overnight ;  or  when  stern  Duty  rapped 
at  the  door  with  his  account,  Dick  was  absent  and  not  ready 
to  pay.  He  was  shirking  at  the  tavern  ;  or  had  some  par- 
ticular business  (of  somebody's  else)  at  the  ordinary ;  or  he 
was  in  hiding,  or  worse  than  in  hiding,  at  the  lock-up  house. 
What  a  situation  for  a  man  ! — for  a  philanthropist — for  a  lover 
of  right  and  truth — for  a  magnificent  designer  and  schemer  ! — 
not  to  dare  to  look  in  the  face  the  Religion  which  he  adored 
and  which  he  had  offended  ;  to  have  to  shirk  down  back  lanes 
and  alleys,  so  as  to  avoid  the  friend  whom  he  loved  and  who 


STEELE  127 

had  trusted  him  ;  to  have  the  house  which  he  had  intended  for 
his  wife,  whom  he  loved,  and  for  her  ladyship's  company, 
which  he  wished  to  entertain  splendidly,  in  the  possession 
of  a  bailiff's  man ;  with  a  crowd  of  little  creditors — grocers, 
butchers,  and  small-coal  men — lingering  round  the  door  with 
their  bills  and  jeering  at  him  !  Alas  for  poor  Dick  Steele ! 
For  nobody  else,  of  course.  .  .  .  There  are  no  little  sins, 
shabby  peccadilloes,  importunate  remembrances,  or  disappoint- 
ed holders  of  our  promises  to  reform,  hovering  at  our  steps  or 
knocking  at  our  door.  Of  course  not.  We  are  living  in  the 
nineteenth  century  ;  and  poor  Dick  Steele  stumbled  and  got 
up  again,  and  got  into  jail  and  got  out  again,  and  sinned  and 
repented,  and  loved  and  suffered,  and  lived  and  died  scores  of 
years  ago.  Peace  be  with  him.  Let  us  think  gently  of  one 
who  was  so  gentle ;  let  us  speak  kindly  of  one  whose  own 
breast  exuberated  with  human  kindness." — Tfiackeray. 

"  His  large  heart  seems  to  rush  out  in  sympathy  with  any 
tale  of  sorrow  or  exhibition  of  magnanimity." — Courthope. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  poor  fellow  at  the  end  of  the  passage,  with  a  rusty  coat,  a 
melancholy  air,  and  soft  voice,  desired  them  '  to  look  upon  a 
man  not  used  to  beg.'  The  latter  received  the  charity  of  almost 
everyone  that  went  by.  The  strings  of  the  heart,  which  are  to 
be  touched  to  give  us  compassion,  are  not  so  played  on  but  by 
the  finest  hand." — The  Tatler. 

"  To  enquire  into  men's  faults  and  weaknesses  has  something 
in  it  so  unwelcome  that  I  have  often  seen  people  in  pain  to  act 
before  me,  whose  modesty  only  makes  them  think  themselves 
liable  to  censure.  This  and  a  thousand  other  nameless  things 
have  made  it  an  irksome  task  to  me  to  personate  Mr.  Bickerstaff 
any  longer  ;  and  I  believe  it  does  not  often  happen  that  the 
reader  is  delighted  where  the  author  is  displeased." — The  Tatler. 

"If we  could  look  into  the  secret  anguish  and  affliction  of 
every  man's  heart,  we  should  often  find  that  more  of  it  arises 
from  little  imaginary  distresses,  such  as  checks,  frowns,  contra- 


128  STEELE 

dictions,  expressions  of  contempt,  and  (what  Shakespeare  reckons 
among  other  evils  under  the  sun) 

'  The  proud  man's  contumely, 
The  insolence  of  office,  and  the  spurns 
That  patient  merit  of  the  unworthy  takes  ' 

than  from  the  more  real  pains  and  calamities  of  life.  The  only 
method  to  remove  these  imaginary  distresses  as  much  as  possible 
out  of  human  life  would  be  the  universal  practice  of  such  an 
ingenuous  complaisance  as  I  have  been  here  describing." — The 
Guardian. 


4.  Kindly  Satire. — Of  all  English  writers  who  have 
satirized  human  foibles  and  frailties,  Steele  is  the  kindliest. 
Himself  "  ever  sinning  and  repenting,"  he  had  the  warmest 
sympathy  with  his  erring  fellow-mortals.  It  is  this  quality 
that  makes  him  always  more  beloved,  though  less  respected, 
than  his  more  pious  and  sometimes  more  malevolent  friend, 
Addison.  "  Steele  exemplified,"  says  Bascom,  "  the  strong, 
heedless,  generous  impulses  of  his  Irish  nationality."  His 
satire  is  certainly  generous,  and  all  his  acts  and  expressions 
were  impulsive. 

"  He  is  a  writer  of  genuinely  amiable  humor.  .  .  . 
Steele  was  a  kindly  observer  of  human  frailties.  Against 
what  he  considered  to  be  heartlessness  and  vice  he  was  open- 
ly indignant.  Minor  faults  he  ridiculed  with  good-humor, 
with  a  certain  fellow-feeling  for  the  objects  of  his  ridicule." 
— Minto. 

"  We  can  forgive  his  tippling  in  taverns  in  consideration 
of  the  loving  touch  with  which  he  handles  the  foibles  of  his 
neighbors  and  the  mirth  without  bitterness  that  flows  from 
his  gentle  pen." — W.  F.  Collier. 

"This  native  vein  is  the  study  of  humanity,  and  upon  this 
he  delights  to  exhaust  the  resources  of  his  genial  humor,  his 
art,  his  raillery,  and  his  playfulness.  The  world  about  him, 
not  always  a  very  reputable  world,  but  one  of  considerable 


STEELE 


129 


extent  and  variety,  this  is  what  he  shows  us,  this  is  what  he 
laughs  with  and  at,  this  is  what  he  strives  to  conquer  by  the 
light  artillery  of  ridicule." — Andrew  Lang. 

"  His  humor  is  uniformly  kindly,  genial,  indulgent,  recog- 
nizing always  that  to  'step  aside  is  human.'  An  object  is 
never  so  ludicrous  but  he  has  somewhere  a  subordinate  stroke 
to  show  that,  though  he  is  laughing,  there  is  nothing  ma- 
licious in  his  mirth.  He  often  seems  to  be  satirizing  himself 

more  than  others,  and  smiling — a  little  ruefully  perhaps at 

his  own  weaknesses  rather  than  theirs.  ...  He  rallied 
the  follies  of  society  with  unfailing  tact  and  good-humor ; 
he  rebuked  its  vices  with  admirable  courage  and  dignity." 
— Austin  Dobson. 

"  A  universality  of  aim  took  away  the  special  intent  of  his 
hits  at  folly ;  and  self-love  was  not  wounded  by  the  judicious 
advice  of  a  kindly  man  of  the  world,  anonymously  tendered. 
The  satire  had  too  much  of  pleasantry  to  embitter  its  object." 
— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Some  men  are  born  at  twenty  years  of  age,  some  at  thirty, 
some  at  three-score,  and  some  not  above  an  hour  before  they 
die  ;  nay,  we  may  observe  multitudes  that  die  without  ever  being 
born,  as  well  as  many  dead  persons  that  fill  up  the  bulk  of  man- 
kind and  make  a  better  figure,  in  the  eyes  of  the  ignorant,  than 
those  who  are  alive  and  in  their  proper  and  full  state  of  health." 
—Dead  Folk. 

"  But,  being  driven  out  of  his  little  law  and  logic,  he  told  me, 
very  pertly,  that  he  looked  upon  such  a  perpendicular  creature 
as  man  to  make  a  very  imperfect  figure  without  a  cane  in  his 
hand.  '  It  is  well  known,'  says  he,  '  we  ought,  according  to  the 
natural  situation  of  our  bodies,  to  walk  upon  our  hands  and  feet  ; 
and  that  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients  had  described  man  to  be 
an  animal  of  four  legs  in  the  morning,  two  at  noon,  and  three  at 
night ;  by  which  they  intimated  that  a  cane  might  very  proper- 
ly become  part  of  us  in  some  period  of  life.'" — Bickerstaff, 
Censor. 

9 


130  STEELE 

"  But  we  must  bear  with  this  false  modesty  in  our  young  nobil- 
ity and  gentry  till  they  cease  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge  to  grow 
dumb  in  the  study  of  eloquence." — Bickerstaff. 

"  There  is  a  doctor  in  Mouse  Alley,  near  Wapping,  who  sets  up 
for  curing  cataracts  upon  the  credit  of  having,  as  his  bill  sets 
forth,  lost  an  eye  in  the  emperor's  service.  His  patients  come  in 
upon  this,  and  he  shows  his  muster-roll,  which  confirms  that  he 
was  in  his  majesty's  troops  ;  and  he  puts  out  their  eyes  with 
great  success."—  Quack  Advertisements. 

"  It  is  very  remarkable  that  these  brothers  of  the  blade  began 
to  appear  upon  the  first  suspension  of  arms  ;  and  that  since  the 
conclusion  of  the  peace  the  order  is  very  much  increased,  both 
as  to  the  number  of  the  men  and  the  size  of  their  weapons." — 
The  Tatler. 

5.  Intense  Pathos. — Steele  was  a  man  of  deep,  emo- 
tional nature.  He  has  less  polish  than  Addison,  but  he  has 
more  human  sympathy.  He  frequently  portrays  what  Hazlitt 
calls  "the  heart-rending  pathos  of  private  distress."  His 
pathos  is  too  intense  to  be  artistic.  It  is  not  a  "  sweet  sor- 
row," but  rather  a  scene  from  which  we  turn  away  in  pain. 
"  If  he  describes  a  death -bed  scene,  or  tells  a  pathetic  story," 
says  one  critic,  "it  is  not  with  the  trickery  of  an  author 
striving  for  effect,  but  with  the  simple  unconscious  pathos  of 
a  man  who  has  witnessed  the  scene,  and  is  still  under  its  sad- 
dening influences."  Even  Steele  himself  was  often  overcome 
by  the  painfulness  of  his  own  creations,  and  he  often  sought 
relief  by  indulgence  in  wine  or  by  very  abruptly  changing  the 
current  of  his  thought.  He  said  of  himself,  "  Pity  is  the 
weakness  of  my  heart." 

"As  might  be  expected  from  his  emotional  nature,  his 
pathetic  side  is  especially  strong  ;  but  it  is  strong  with  all  the 
defects  of  that  nature — that  is  to  say,  it  is  rather  poignant 
and  intense  than  fine  or  suggestive.  He  is  not  in  the  least 
ashamed  of  his  tears  ;  and  when,  with  Master  Stephen,  he 
mounts  his  stool  to  be  melancholy,  he  is  for  no  half-measures 
in  grief." — Andrew  Lang, 


STEELE  131 

"  Steele  is  one  of  the  most  touching  of  our  writers.  The 
incidents  that  he  recalled  or  imagined  were  of  the  most  heart- 
rending character.  .  .  .  Most  of  those  [papers]  that  do 
appeal  to  our  tender  sensibilities  lay  before  us  situations  of 
extreme  anguish." — Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  O  Death,  thou  hast  right  to  the  bold,  to  the  ambitious,  to  the 
high,  and  to  the  haughty  ;  but  why  this  cruelty  to  the  humble,  to 
the  meek,  to  the  undiscerning,  to  the  thoughtless  ?  Nor  age,  nor 
business,  nor  distress  can  erase  the  dear  image  from  my  imagi- 
nation. In  the  same  week  I  saw  her  dressed  for  a  ball  and  in  a 
shroud.  How  ill  did  the  habit  of  death  become  the  pretty  trifler ! 

I  still  behold  the  smiling  earth .  A  large  train  of  disasters 

were  coming  on  to  my  memory,  when  my  servant  knocked  at 
my  closet  door,  and  interrupted  me  with  a  letter,  attended  with 
a  hamper  of  wine,  of  the  same  sort  with  that  which  is  to  be  put 
to  sale  on  Thursday  next  at  Garraway's  coffee -house." — Recol- 
lections. 

"  Sir,  I,  who  two  hours  ago  told  you  truly  I  was  the  happiest 
man  alive,  am  now  the  most  miserable.  Your  daughter  lies  dead 
at  my  feet,  killed  by  my  hand,  through  a  mistake  of  my  man's 
charging  my  pistols  unknown  to  me.  .  .  .  Him  I  have  mur- 
dered for  it.  Such  is  my  wedding-day.  I  will  immediately  fol- 
low my  wife  to  her  grave  ;  but  before  I  throw  myself  upon  my 
sword,  I  command  my  distraction  so  far  as  to  explain  my  story 
to  you.  I  fear  my  heart  will  not  keep  together  till  I  have  stabbed 
it.  Poor,  good  old  man !  Remember,  he  that  killed  your 
daughter  died  for  it.  In  the  article  of  death,  I  give  you  my 
thanks  and  pray  for  you,  though  I  dare  not  for  myself.  If  it  be 
possible,  do  not  curse  me." — Love  and  Sorrow. 

"  My  heart  was  torn  to  pieces,  to  see  the  husband  on  one  side 
suppressing  and  keeping  down  the  swellings  of  his  grief,  for  fear 
of  disturbing  her  in  her  last  moments  ;  and  the  wife  even  at  that 
time  concealing  the  pains  she  endured  for  fear  of  increasing  his 
affliction.  She  kept  her  eyes  upon  him  for  some  moments  after 
she  grew  speechless,  and  soon  after  closed  them  forever.  In  the 
moment  of  her  departure,  my  friend,  who  had  thus  far  com- 


132  STEELE 

manded  himself,  gave  a  deep  groan  and  fell  into  a  swoon  by  her 
bedside."—  The  Wife  Dead. 

6.  Good  Sense— Sound  Judgment.— Steele  mani- 
fested peculiar  skill  in  his  method  of  applying  truths  and 
principles  to  the  social  problems  with  which  he  was  dealing. 
He  had  a  clear  perception  of  character  and  "a  clear,  strong, 
practical  distinction  of  what  was  true,  useful,  and  becoming 
in  the  matter  before  him."  "The  general  purpose  of  the 
whole,"  wrote  Steele  of  the  Spectator,  "has  been  to  recom- 
mend truth,  honor,  and  virtue  as  the  chief  ornaments  of  life  ; 
but  I  considered  severity  of  manners  was  absolutely  essential 
to  him  who  would  censure  others,  and  for  that  reason,  and 
that  only,  chose  to  wear  a  mask."  In  his  expressions  con- 
cerning the  manners,  morals,  and  politics  of  the  time,  there 
appear  constantly  statements  that  impress  one  with  their 
hard,  practical  common-sense.  This  can  better  be  illustrated 
than  defined. 

"  The  cardinal  quality  of  these  papers  [Steele's  '  Essays '] 
is  their  good  sense  ;  this  never  forsakes  them.  Their  philos- 
ophy presents  it  in  a  penetrative,  their  humor  in  a  pungent, 
form.  This  good  sense  was  most  effective  in  securing  uni- 
form success.  Whatever  the  object  of  satire — the  pedantry 
of  learning,  the  conceit  of  rank,  the  foppishness  of  dress, 
the  frivolity  of  etiquette,  the  prejudice  of  partisanship — the 
same  sober,  sound  opinion  underlay  and  sustained  the  attack." 
— Bascom. 

Steele  says  of  himself:  "  It  was  my  aim,  in  any  intelligible 
manner  as  I  could,  to  rally  all  those  singularities  of  human 
life,  through  the  different  professions  and  characters  in  it, 
which  obstruct  anything  that  is  truly  good  and  great." 

Minto  speaks  of  Steele's  "  mingling  good  sense  and  earnest- 
ness with  merriment  and  burlesque,"  and  Drake  says,  "He 
was  uniformly  the  friend  of  virtue,  propriety,  and  good 
sense. ' ' 


STEELE  133 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Any  doctrine  on  the  subject  of  dying  other  than  that  of  liv- 
ing well  is  the  most  insignificant  and  most  empty  of  all  labors 
of  men." — The  Tatler. 

"  Learning  does  but  improve  in  us  what  nature  has  endowed 
us  with,  for  not  to  have  good  sense  with  learning  is  only  to  have 
more  ways  of  exposing  one's  self." —  The  Tatler. 

"  He  who  thinks  no  man  his  superior  but  for  virtue  and  no 
man  his  inferior  but  for  vice,  can  never  be  obsequious  or  assum- 
ing in  a  wrong  place,  but  will  be  as  ready  frequently  to  emulate 
men  in  rank  below  him  as  to  avoid  and  pity  those  above." — The 
Tatler. 

"It  is  a  mistaken  sense  of  superiority  to  believe  a  figure  or 
equipage  gives  men  precedence  to  their  neighbors.  Nothing  can 
create  respect  from  mankind  but  laying  obligations  upon  them  ; 
and  it  may  very  reasonably  be  concluded  that  if  it  were  put  into  a 
due  balance,  according  to  the  true  state  of  the  account,  many 
who  believe  themselves  in  possession  of  a  large  share  of  dignity 
in  the  world  must  give  place  to  their  inferiors.  The  greatest  of 
all  distinctions  in  civil  life  is  that  of  debtor  and  creditor ;  and 
there  needs  no  great  progress  in  logic  to  know  which,  in  that  case, 
is  the  advantageous  side." — Men  Not  Their  Own  Masters. 

"  Familiarity,  among  the  truly  well-bred,  never  gives  authority 
to  trespass  upon  one  another  in  the  most  minute  circumstance  ; 
but  it  allows  us  to  be  kinder  than  we  ought  otherwise  to  presume 
to  be."—  The  Tatler. 

7.  Reverence  for  Womanhood. — "  Steele's  wife 
preserved  every  scrap  of  his  written  communications  to  her. 
.  .  It  is  remarkable  what  a  key  is  thus  furnished  to  the 
knowledge  of  his  heart  and  habits.  Above  all,  these  little 
notes,  in  every  phrase  and  tone,  evidence  Steele's  warm,  wise, 
and  chivalric  appreciation  of  woman — a  sentiment  rare  in  his 
day.  .  .  .  For  him  it  were  needless  to  plead  for  woman's 
rights ;  he  recognized  them,  not  indeed  as  external  civil  priv- 
ileges, but  as  social  authorities,  in  her  very  nature.  .  .  . 


134  STEELE 

His  recognition  of  woman's  needs  as  a  rational  creature,  and 
his  respect  and  tenderness  for  her,  as  evinced  in  his  writings, 
are  confirmed  by,  or  rather  originated  in,  his  private  experi- 
ence. .  .  .  Women,  especially,  owe  Steele  no  small  ob- 
ligation for  advocating  the  mental  capabilities,  recognizing 
the  social  mission,  and  exposing  the  baneful  follies  of  their 
sex." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

1 '  All  women  especially  are  bound  to  be  grateful  to  Steele, 
as  he  was  the  first  of  our  writers  who  really  seemed  to  admire 
and  respect  them.  ...  It  was  Steele  who  first  began  to 
pay  a  manly  homage  to  their  goodness  and  understanding 
as  well  as  to  their  tenderness  and  beauty.  .  .  .  Steele 
admires  women's  virtue,  acknowledges  their  sense,  and  adores 
their  purity  and  beauty  with  an  ardor  and  strength  which 
should  earn  the  good-will  of  all  women  to  their  hearty  and 
respectful  champion.  He  paid  the  finest  compliment  to  a 
woman  that  perhaps  ever  was  offered.  He  said,  '  To  have 
loved  her  was  a  liberal  education.'  .  .  .  His  breast 
seems  to  warm  and  his  eyes  to  kindle  when  he  meets  a  good 
and  beautiful  woman,  and  it  is  with  his  heart  as  well  as  with 
his  hat  that  he  salutes  her.  ...  A  gallant  tenderness 
for  the  sex  [female]  shines  through  good-natured  Dick's 
mock-heroic  humor.  Addison  politely  holds  the  sex  up  to 
ridicule ;  Steele  sympathizes  with  their  little  artifices, 
and  even  insinuates  a  piece  of  genuine  good  advice  as 
to  the  best  means  of  success.  .  .  .  Steele's  '  Sir  Roger  ' 
is  quite  a  different  person  from  Addison's  'Sir  Roger.' 
All  that  is  amiable  in  the  conception  belongs  to  Steele." — 
Thackeray. 

"  He  wrote  of  women  and  children  as,  in  his  day,  no 
writer  had  hitherto  dared  to  do.  As  the  first  painter  of  do- 
mesticity the  modern  novel  owes  him  much.  .  .  .  Of 
women  Steele  wrote  with  an  insight,  an  admiration,  an  hon- 
esty, and  a  chivalry  which  should  forever  entitle  him  to  the 
gratitude  of  the  sex." — Austin  Dobson. 


STEELE  135 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  You  see  in  no  place  of  conversation  the  perfection  of  speech 
so  much  as  in  an  accomplished  woman,  whether  it  be  that  there 
is  a  partiality  irresistible  when  we  judge  of  that  sex,  or  whatever 
it  is,  you  may  observe  a  wonderful  freedom  in  their  utterance 
and  an  easy  flow  of  words,  without  being  distracted,  as  we  often 
are  who  read  much,  in  the  choice  of  dictions  and  phrases." — The 
Tatler. 

"  You  will  therefore  forgive  me  that  I  strive  to  conceal  every 
wrong  step  made  by  any  who  have  the  honor  to  wear  petticoats, 
and  shall  at  all  times  do  what  is  in  my  power  to  make  all  mankind 
as  much  their  slaves  as  myself." — The  Tatler. 

"  In  short,  I  must  tell  my  female  readers,  and  they  may  take 
an  old  man's  word  for  it,  that  there  is  nothing  in  woman  so  grace- 
ful and  becoming  as  modesty.  It  adds  charms  to  their  beauty, 
and  gives  a  new  softness  to  their  sex." — The  Tatler. 

8.  Power  of  Portraiture. — "  The  lesson  is  generally 
instilled  unostentatiously  by  a  vivid  sketch  of  some  individual, 
so  full  of  life  that  a  very  few  words  suffice  to  make  the  char- 
acter remain  fixed  in  our  memories.  In  the  number  and 
variety  of  such  portraits  Steele  is  unrivalled." — Aitken. 

"  The  Portraits  of  Bickerstafif  and  Cynthio  in  the  Tatler,  of 
Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  in  the  Spectator,  and  of  Nestor  Iron- 
sides in  the  Guardian,  are  drawn  and  finished  in  a  manner 
which  not  only  indicates  a  perfect  insight  into  the  passions 
and  feelings  of  the  human  frame,  but  demonstrates  likewise  the 
possession  of  that  creative  energy  which,  from  the  numerous 
shades  and  gradations  of  manner,  can  select  and  associate  such 
features  as  shall  designate  a  character  altogether  original, 
though  founded  on  the  usual  acknowledged  motives  and  ac- 
tions of  mankind." — N.  Drake. 

"  By  what  other  power  is  it  that  Steele  assembles  his  little 
groups  at  the  coffee-houses,  or  in  private  families,  or  in  his 
own  apartment,  and  sets  people  before  us  in  such  a  manner 


136  STEELE 

that  we  at  once  become  acquainted  with  them,  as  if  they  had 
fallen  in  our  way,  and  makes  them  talk,  not  as  in  books, 
but  as  if  every  word  had  been  taken  down  from  real  conver- 
sation? .  .  .  This  familiar  every-day  acquaintance  with 
characters  of  every  variety  and  without  number,  is  not  and 
could  not  be  obtained  from  mere  delineation.  They  are  not 
sketches ;  they  are  genuine  living  men  and  women.  We 
know  them  and  their  manner  of  life.  We  are  prepared  for 
all  they  have  to  say.  We  can  account  for  their  motives,  an- 
ticipate their  doubts,  answer  their  objections,  advise  them 
what  to  do,  and  predict  their  destiny." — W.  E.  Channing. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  That  animal  whom  we  call  a  pretty  fellow  ;  who,  being  just 
able  to  find  out  that  what  makes  Sophronius  acceptable  is  a  nat- 
ural behavior,  in  order  to  the  same  reputation,  makes  his  own  an 
artificial  one.  Sophronius  just  now  passed  into  the  inner  room 
directly  forward  ;  Jack  comes  as  fast  after  as  he  can  for  the  right 
and  left  looking-glass,  in  which  he  had  but  just  approved  himself 
by  a  nod  at  each,  and  marched  on.  He  will  meditate  within  for 
half  an  hour,  until  he  thinks  he  is  not  careless  enough  in  his  air, 
and  come  back  to  the  mirror  to  recollect  his  forgetfulness." — 
The  Tatler. 

"  I  had  hardly  been  accommodated  with  a  seat,  before  there 
entered  into  the  aisle  a  young  lady  in  the  very  bloom  of  youth 
and  beauty,  and  dressed  in  the  most  elegant  manner  imaginable. 
Her  form  was  such  that  it  engaged  the  eyes  of  the  whole  congre- 
gation in  an  instant,  and  mine  among  the  rest.  Though  we  were 
all  thus  fixed  upon  her,  she  was  not  in  the  least  out  of  counte- 
nance or  under  the  least  disorder.  However,  she  had  not  in  the 
least  a  confident  aspect,  but  moved  on  with  the  most  graceful 
modesty.  The  deputy  of  the  ward  sat  in  that  pew,  and  she  stood 
opposite  to  him ;  and  at  a  glance  into  the  seat,  though  she  did  not 
appear  the  least  acquainted  with  the  gentleman,  was  let  in  with  a 
confusion  that  spoke  much  admiration  at  the  novelty  of  the  thing. 
The  service  immediately  began,  and  she  composed  herself  for  it 


STEELE  137 

with  an  air  of  so  much  goodness  and  sweetness  that  the  confes- 
sion, which  she  uttered  so  as  to  be  heard  where  I  sat,  appeared 
an  act  of  humiliation  more  than  she  had  occasion  for.  The  truth 
is,  her  beauty  had  something  so  innocent  and  yet  so  sublime  that 
we  all  gazed  upon  her  like  a  phantom.  None  of  the  pictures 
which  we  behold  of  the  best  Italian  painters  have  anything  like 
the  spirit  which  appeared  in  her  countenance  at  the  different  sen- 
timents expressed  in  the  several  parts  of  the  divine  service.  That 
gratitude  and  joy  at  a  thanksgiving,  that  lowliness  and  sorrow  at 
the  prayers  for  the  sick  and  distressed,  that  triumph  at  the  pas- 
sages which  gave  instances  of  the  divine  mercy." — The  Spectator. 
"But  the  next  heir  that  possessed  it  was  this  soft  gentleman, 
whom  you  see  there.  Observe  the  small  buttons,  the  little  boots, 
the  laces,  the  slashes  about  his  clothes,  and  above  all  the  post- 
ure he  is  drawn  in  (which  to  be  sure  was  his  own  choosing)  ;  you 
see  he  sits  with  one  hand  on  a  desk,  writing  and  looking  as  it  were 
another  way,  .like  an  easy  writer  or  a  sonneteer.  He  was  one  of 
those  that  had  too  much  wit  to  know  how  to  live  in  the  world  ; 
he  was  a  man  of  no  justice,  but  great  good  manners  ;  he  ruined 
everybody  that  had  anything  to  do  with  him,  but  never  said  a 
rude  thing  in  his  life  ;  the  most  indolent  person  in  the  world,  he 
would  sign  a  deed  that  passed  away  half  his  estate  with  his  gloves 
on,  but  would  not  put  on  his  hat  before  a  lady  if  it  were  to  save 
his  country." — Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  Papers. 

9.  Spontaneity— Vivacity. — "Addison,  with  all  his 
amazing  genius,  could  not  get  on  without  Steele.  There 
was  an  amount  of  nerve  and,  if  we  may  be  allowed  a  vulgar- 
ity, 'go'  about  Steele  which  Addison  never  had." — Charles 
Kingsley. 

"  His  humor,  in  short,  has  the  prevailing  characteristic  of 
his  genius — it  is  spontaneous  and  genuine,  but  often  loose 
and  ill-considered  in  expression.  Still,  it  is  so  cheerful  and 
good-natured,  so  frank  and  manly,  that  one  is  often  tempted 
to  echo  the  declaration  of  Leigh  Hunt — '  I  prefer  open- 
hearted  Steele  with  all  his  faults  to  Addison  with  all  his  es- 
says.' " — Andrew  Lang. 

"  The  first  sprightly  runnings  are  there — [in  the  Tatler\ 


138  STEELE 

it  has  more  of  the  original  spirit,  more  of  the  freshness  and 
stamp  of  nature."- — Hazlitt. 

"  While  Mr.  Addison  was  abroad,  and  after  he  came  home, 
in  rather  a  dismal  way,  to  wait  upon  Providence  in  his  shabby 
lodging  in  the  Haymarket,  young  Captain  Steele  was  cutting 
a  much  smarter  figure  than  that  of  his  classical  friend  of 
Charterhouse  Cloister  and  Maudlin  Walk.  Could  not  some 
painter  give  an  interview  between  the  gallant  captain  of  Lu- 
cas's, with  his  hat  cocked,  and  hfs  lace,  and  his  face  too,  a 
trifle  tarnished  with  drink,  and  that  poet,  that  philosopher, 
pale,  proud,  and  poor,  his  friend  and  monitor  of  school-days, 
of  all  days  ?  How  Dick  must  have  bragged  about  his  chances 
and  his  hopes,  and  the  fine  company  he  kept,  and  the  charms 
of  the  reigning  toasts  and  popular  actresses,  and  the  number 
of  bottles  that  he  and  my  lord  and  some  other  pretty  fellows 
had  cracked  overnight  at  the  '  Devil '  or  the  '  Garter  !  '  Can- 
not one  fancy  Joseph  Addison's  calm  smile  and  cold  gray 
eyes  following  Dick  for  an  instant  as  he  struts  down  the  Mall 
to  dine  with  the  Guard  at  St.  James,  before  he  turns,  with  his 
sober  pace  and  threadbare  suit,  to  walk  back  to  his  lodgings 
up  the  two  pair  of  stairs  ?  " — Thackeray. 

"  We  have  already  called  Steele' s  wit  fresh  and  natural. 
It  came  with  no  stinted  flow.  He  wrote  as  he  lived,  freely 
and  carelessly,  scattering  the  coinage  of  his  brain,  as  he  did 
his  guineas,  with  an  unsparing  hand.  All  who  read  his  pa- 
pers or  his  letters  to  Prue  cannot  help  seeing  the  good  heart 
of  the  rattle-brain  shining  out  in  every  line." — W.  F.  Collier. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Two  sisters  in  Essex  Street  are  eternally  gaping  out  of  the 
window,  as  if  they  knew  not  the  value  of  time.  .  .  .  Upon 
which  I  writ  the  following  line  :  '  Dear  Creatures,  on  the  receipt 
of  this,  shut  your  casement.'  But  I  went  by  yesterday,  and 
found  them  still  at  the  window.  What  can  a  man  do  in  this 
case  but  go  on  and  wrap  himself  up  in  his  own  integrity  ?  "- 
The  Tatler. 


STEELE  139 

"  Since  this  body  must  be  earth,  I  shall  commit  it  to  the  dust 
in  a  manner  suitable  to  my  character.  Therefore,  as  there  are 
those  who  dispute  whether  there  is  any  such  real  person  as  Isaac 
Bickerstaff  or  not,  I  shall  excuse  all  persons  who  appear  what 
they  really  are  from  coming  to  my  funeral.  But  all  those  who 
are,  in  their  way  of  life,  personce,  as  the  Latins  have  it,  persons 
assumed,  and  who  appear  what  they  really  are  not,  are  hereby 
invited  to  that  solemnity."—  The  Tatler. 

"  The  last  letter  I  shall  insert  is  as  follows  :  This  is  written 
by  a  very  inquisitive  lady  ;  and  I  think  such  interrogative  gentle- 
women are  to  be  answered  no  other  way  than  by  interrogation. 
Her  billet  is  this  : 

'  Dear  Mr.  Bickerstaff  : 

'  Are  you  quite  as  good  as  you  seem  to  be  ? 

'  CHLOE.' 
To  which  I  can  only  answer  : 

'  Dear  Chloe : 

'  Are  you  quite  as  ignorant  as  you  seem  to  be  ? 

'I.  B.'"—  The  Tatler. 

10.  High  Moral  Aim. — "In  his  ever-lovable  writings 
he  always  kept  before  him  the  highest  aims,  endeavoring  to 
reform  manners  and  help  m  raising  mankind  to  a  higher  level ; 
whatever  the  method,  the  aim  was  always  the  same,  and  in  no 
field  were  his  efforts  without  success." — Aitken. 

"  It  was  no  part  of  Steele's  object  or  habits  to  make  brilliant 
sentences  on  any  subject.  He  was  deliberately  occupied  with 
making  men  better.  .  .  .  The  utmost  sweetness  and  love 
breathe  through  his  moral  speculations.  How  tender  his  re- 
membrance of  affecting  scenes  in  his  childhood  !  How  lively 
his  sense  of  the  beauty  of  a  sound,  honest  heart ;  of  the  dig- 
nity and  benign  power  of  women  ;  of  the  claims,  confidence, 
and  reward  of  friendship ;  of  the  deference  we  owe  to  others 
in  the  smallest  things  !  We  are  drawn  near  to  him,  and 
breathe  the  air  of  benevolence  and  courtesy,  and  love  him 
the  more  that  he  is  not  perfect,  if  only  for  sympathy  ;  .  .  . 
Though  in  the  great  variety  of  his  topics  he  says  many 
things  frivolous  and  exceptionable,  yet  the  inculcation  of  re- 


140  STEELE 

ligious  truth,  motives,  and  obligations  is,  in  his  lateres  says 
at  least,  steadily,  perseveringly  pursued.  It  is  postponed  for 
nothing  else.  It  is  introduced  at  any  moment  and  in  any 
connection  where  it  can  be  with  prudence  and  decency  ;  and 
for  the  most  part  in  a  strictly  practical  manner." — W.  E. 
Channing. 

"  He  brought  his  daily  observations  of  life,  his  gleanings  in 
society,  his  early  studies,  his  critical  estimate  of  authors  and 
actors,  and  his  reflections  on  the  destiny  and  duty  of  his  fel- 
lows to  bear  on  his  essays,  .  .  .  now  entering  a  satirical 
protest,  advocating  amelioration  in  manners,  suggesting  im- 
proved standards,  winning  to  more  wise  pastimes  and  more 
gracious  intercourse." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  His  utterances  on  Charity,  Benevolence,  Praise,  Flattery, 
Distinction,  and  the  like,  are  admirable  lay-sermons,  full  of  a 
noble  and  earnest  sincerity." — Andrew  Lang. 

"Without  any  fear  of  scoffing  and  deistical  critics  before 
their  eyes,  they  [Addison  and  Steele]  tried  to  uphold  common 
sense,  decency,  order,  virtue,  and  religion,  and  on  the  other 
hand  to  show  the  folly  of  vice  and  to  laugh  at  the  senseless  prof- 
ligacy of  the  rake,  the  fop,  and  the  fool." — J.  H.  Friswell. 

"  The  papers  which  originated  with  Steele  .  .  .  were 
a  social  evangel.  .  .  .  They  aimed  at  what  they  did 
much  to  accomplish,  a  social  regeneration."— /.  Bascom. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  for  my  part.  I  ever  esteemed  a  drunkard  of  all  vicious 
persons  the  most  vicious.  ...  If  a  man  consider  that  he 
cannot,  under  the  oppression  of  drink,  be  a  friend,  a  gentleman, 
a  master,  or  a  subject  ;  that  he  has  so  long  banished  himself  from 
all  that  is  dear,  and  given  up  all  that  is  sacred  to  him  ;  he  would 
even  then  think  of  a  debauch  with  horror." — The  Tatler. 

"  The  world  will  never  be  in  any  manner  of  order  or  tranquillity 
till  men  are  firmly  convinced  that  conscience,  honor,  and  credit 
are  all  in  one  interest ;  and  that  without  the  concurrence  of  the 


STEELE  HI 

former,  the  latter  are  but  impositions  upon  ourselves  and  others." 
—  The  Taller. 

"  Now  the  bubble  courts  the  impostor,  and  pretends  at  the 
utmost  to  be  but  his  equal.  To  clear  up  the  reasons  and  causes 
in  such  revolutions  and  the  different  conduct  between  fools  and 
cheats,  shall  be  one  of  our  labors  for  the  good  of  this  kingdom." — 
The  Taller. 

"  Of  all  the  evils  under  the  sun,  that  of  making  vice  commend- 
able is  the  greatest ;  for  it  seems  to  be  the  basis  of  society  that 
applause  and  contempt  should  be  always  given  to  proper  objects. 
But  in  this  age  we  behold  things  for  which  we  ought  to  have  an 
abhorrence  not  only  received  without  disdain  but  even  valued  as 
motives  of  emulation.  This  is  naturally  the  destruction  of  sim- 
plicity of  manner,  openness  of  heart,  and  generosity  of  temper. 
When  one  gives  one's  self  the  liberty  to  range  and  run  over  in 
one's  thoughts  the  different  geniuses  of  men  which  one  meets  in 
the  world,  one  cannot  but  observe  that  most  of  the  indirection 
and  artifice  which  is  used  among  men  does  not  proceed  so  much 
from  a  degeneracy  in  nature  as  [from]  an  affectation  of  appear- 
ing men  of  consequence  by  such  practices." — The  Toiler. 

ii.  Grave  Intentional  Exaggeration. — This  has 
always  been  a  common  form  of  humor,  but  few  writers  have 
equalled  the  founder  of  the  Tatler  in  the  profound  gravity 
and  deliberation  with  which  he  sets  down  the  most  astound- 
ing hyperbole. 

"  He  knows  very  well  how  to  exaggerate  in  a  quiet,  grave 
style,  which  looks  like  truth,  and  throws  the  whole  force  of 
the  manner  upon  the  point  he  aims  at." — W.  E.  Channing. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Being  informed  that  several  dead  men  in  and  about  this  city 
do  keep  out  of  the  way  and  abscond,  for  fear  of  being  buried  ; 
and  being  willing  to  respite  their  interment,  in  consideration  of 
their  families  and  in  hopes  of  their  amendment,  I  shall  allow 
them  certain  privileged  places,  where  they  may  appear  to  one 
another,  without  causing  any  let  or  molestation  to  the  living,  or 


142  STEELE 

receiving  any,  in  their  own  persons,  from  the  company  of  Up- 
holders . "— Bicker  sta/. 

' '  The  stratagem  had  so  good  an  effect  upon  him  that  he  grew 
immediately  a  new  man,  and  is  learning  to  speak  without  an 
oath  ;  which  makes  him  extremely  short  in  his  phrases  ;  for,  as  I 
observed  before,  a  common  swearer  has  a  brain  without  any  idea 
on  the  swearing  side  ;  therefore  my  ward  has  yet  mighty  little  to 
say,  and  is  forced  to  substitute  some  other  vehicle  of  nonsense  to 
supply  the  defect  of  his  unusual  expletives." — Pacolet. 

"  Whereas,  a  commission  of  interment  has  been  awarded 
against  Doctor  John  Partridge,  philomath,  professor  of  physic 
and  astrology,  and  whereas  the  said  Partridge  hath  not  sur- 
rendered himself,  nor  shown  cause  to  the  contrary  :  These  are 
to  certify  that  the  Company  of  Upholders  will  proceed  to  bury 
him  from  Cordwainer's  Hall,  on  Tuesday  the  twenty-ninth  in- 
stant, where  any  six  of  his  surviving  friends,  who  still  believe 
him  to  be  alive,  are  desired  to  come  prepared  to  hold  up  the 
pall."— Pacolet. 

"  I  shall  here  publish  to  the  world  the  life  of  a  person  who 
was  neither  man  nor  woman  ;  .  .  .  who,  as  the  town  very  well 
knows,  was  a  woman  that  practised  physic  in  a  man's  clothes, 
and,  after  having  had  two  wives  and  several  children,  died  about 
a  month  since."—  The  Tatler. 


DEFOE,  1661  (?)-i73i 

Biographical  Outline. — Daniel  Defoe,  born  in  1660 
or  1 66 1  in  the  parish  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  London  ; 
father  a  well-to-do  nonconformist  butcher  named  Foe  ;  Defoe 
changes  his  name  to  Defoe  about  1703,  for  reasons  variously 
assigned  ;  he  enters  the  academy  at  Newington  Green  at  the 
age  of  fourteen  ;  he  afterward  declared  that  he  "  understood  " 
Latin,  Spanish,  and  Italian,  that  he  "  could  read  "  Greek, 
and  that  he  spoke  French  "fluently;"  he  also  obtained 
some  knowledge  of  mathematics,  a  wide  acquaintance  with 
geography,  modern  history,  and  the  existing  commercial  con- 
ditions of  his  day,  and  took  the  theological  and  philosophical 
courses  necessary  to  fit  him  for  the  dissenting  ministry  ;  he 
goes  into  business  as  a  hose  factor  about  1685  ;  participates 
in  the  "No-popery"  riots  of  1685;  joins  William's  army  on 
its  approach  to  London,  in  1688;  in  1701  he  publishes  a 
pamphlet  on  the  succession,  proposing  to  investigate  the 
claims  of  Monmouth  ;  he  engages  in  foreign  trade,  visiting 
France,  Germany,  and  Spain,  and  becomes  bankrupt  about 
1692;  by  1705  he  has  reduced  his  debts  from  ^17,000  to 
,£5,000,  discharging  in  full  obligations  for  which  composi- 
tion had  been  accepted ;  he  philosophizes  on  his  financial 
experience  in  an  "Essay  on  Projects,"  published  in  1698  ;  in 
this  essay  he  shows  himself  to  be  a  most  intelligent  observer, 
and  foreshadows  several  commercial  institutions  that  were  not 
developed  till  a  century  later  ;  in  1694  he  refuses  the  offer  of 
a  commercial  agency  in  Spain,  in  order  to  give  his  services 
toward  solving  the  financial  problems  of  the  government  ;  in 
1695  he  is  made  accountant  to  the  Commissioners  of  the  Glass 

143 


144  DEFOE 

Duty,  an  office  that  he  held  till  the  commission  was  suppressed 
in  1699  ;  he  is  also  secretary  and  a  partner  in  a  company  en- 
gaged in  making  pantiles  [curved  roof-tiles]  at  Tilbury — 
a  business  that  proves  remunerative  ;  in  the  later  years  of 
William's  reign  Defoe  becomes  prominent  as  a  pamphleteer  in 
support  of  the  king's  character  and  policy ;  he  argues  in 
favor  of  a  standing  army  in  1697;  in  1700  he  publishes 
The  Two  Great  Questions,  a  pamphlet  vigorously  defending 
the  expected  war,  of  which  a  French  translation,  with  a  reply, 
appeared  in  1701;  in  1701  he  also  writes  "The  True-Born 
Englishman,  a  Satyr,"  being  a  reply  to  a  poem  by  one  Tut- 
chin,  in  which  William  had  been  called  a  Dutchman ;  by 
1705  nine  genuine  and  twelve  pirated  editions  of  this  poem 
had  been  printed,  and  80,000  copies  sold  in  the  streets ;  Defoe 
is  presented  to  William,  who  treats  him  with  confidence;  in 
1701  he  writes  Six  Distinguishing  Characters  of  a  Parliament 
Man,  denouncing  stock-jobbers  and  calling  attention  to  the 
serious  political  questions  of  the  day  ;  in  the  same  year,  on  the 
imprisonment  of  the  Whig  presenters  of  the  "  Kentish  Peti- 
tion," he  publishes  the  "Legion  Memorial,"  and  presents  it 
to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons,  with  the  result  of 
liberating  the  petitioners;  in  December,  1701,  he  publishes 
"  The  Original  Power  of  the  Collective  Body  of  the  English 
People,"  his  most  noteworthy  discussion  of  political  theories; 
in  his  "  Reasons  against  a  War  with  France  "  (1701)  he  urges 
that  England  should  secure  the  colonial  empire  of  Spain  ;  on 
William's  death,  March  8,  1702,  he  publishes  a  poem,  "  Mock 
Mourners,"  ridiculing  the  official  lamentations,  and  a  pam- 
phlet, New  Test  of  the  Church  of  England's  Loyalty,  at- 
tacking the  high  church  party  ;  in  1702  he  joins  in  the  con- 
troversy over  the  bill  suppressing  "occasional  nonconformity," 
though  he  admits  the  necessity  of  the  Established  Church  as  a 
barrier  against  popery  and  infidelity,  and  does  not  object  to 
limited  tests ;  in  his  Dissenters'  Answer  to  High  Chunk 
Challenge  he  asserts  that  the  dissenters  would  conform  if  ob- 


DEFOE  145 

noxious  ceremonies  were  not  insisted  on,  and  argues  that  it  is 
an  injustice  to  require  military  and  naval  service  from  dis- 
senters while  excluding  them  from  preferment ;  he  is  charged 
with  desertion  by  the  more  narrow  dissenters,  and,  in  self- 
defence,  publishes  The  Shortest  Way  with  Dissenters,  a 
satirical  pamphlet  ostensibly  written  by  a  high  churchman,  in 
which  it  is  proposed  to  extirpate  the  dissenters  as  the  French 
king  had  extirpated  the  Protestants ;  the  more  vehement 
Tories  approve  the  pamphlet  in  earnest,  and  one  clergyman 
places  it  next  to  the  Bible  in  his  estimation  ;  but  the  reaction 
soon  comes,  and  Defoe  is  prosecuted  for  libelling  the  Church 
by  misrepresenting  its  principles;  the  House  of  Commons 
orders  the  pamphlet  to  be  burned,  and  a  reward  is  offered  for 
Defoe's  apprehension  ;  he  is  indicted  February  24,  1703,  is 
tried  in  the  following  July,  acknowledges  the  authorship,  and 
is  sentenced  to  pay  a  fine  of  two  hundred  marks,  to  stand  three 
times  in  the  pillory,  to  be  imprisoned  during  the  Queen's 
pleasure,  and  to  give  security  for  his  good  behavior  during  the 
succeeding  seven  years  ;  he  publishes  several  other  pamphlets 
on  the  subject  of  conformity,  all  advocating  toleration ;  he 
stands  in  the  pillory  July  29,  30,  and  31,  1703  ;  the  popu- 
lace form  a  guard,  cover  the  pillory  with  flowers,  and  drink 
to  his  health  ;  Defoe  publishes  his  "  Hymn  to  the  Pillory," 
which  sells  in  great  numbers  ;  afterward  he  is  imprisoned  in 
Newgate,  and  is  thus  compelled  to  abandon  his  business  at 
Tilbury,  thereby  losing  ,£3,500  ;  he  obtains  a  precarious 
support  for  his  wife  and  six  children  by  writing  pamphlets  on 
the  questions  of  the  day,  besides  A  Layman 's  Sermon  on  the 
great  storm  (November  27,  1703)  ;  his  notoriety  leads  to  a 
spurious  publication  of  his  writings,  and,  in  1703,  he  pub- 
lishes the  first  volume  of  a  "true  collection,"  followed,  in 
1705,  by  a  second  volume;  during  his  imprisonment  he  be- 
gins his  Review,  at  first  a  weekly  paper  and  afterward  issued 
r\vo  and  three  times  a  week,  of  which  the  full  title  was  "A 
Review  of  the  Affairs  of  France  and  of  All  Europe,  as  Influ- 
xo 


146  DEFOE 

enced  by  the  Nation;  "  an  imaginary  "Scandal  Club"  con- 
tributes to  its  pages,  and  fills  five  monthly  supplements  in 
1704  with  its  "Advices;  "  during  half  of  1705  the  "Ad- 
vices" appear  twice  a  week  as  a  separate  publication  called 
The  Little  Review ;  in  July,  1712,  the  Review  ceases  in  its 
old  form,  but  a  new  series,  called  simply  The  Review,  is  is- 
sued twice  a  week  till  June,  1713  ;  during  the  ten  years  of 
the  publication  Defoe  writes  all  its  contents,  never  missing  a 
number  ;  during  the  same  period  he  also  publishes  eighty 
other  books  equalling  the  Review  in  bulk ;  the  Review  marks 
the  beginning  of  English  periodical  literature,  and  suggested, 
later,  the  Tatler  and  the  Spectator ;  the  expulsion  of  Notting- 
ham, Defoe's  special  enemy,  and  the  admission  of  Harley  to 
the  ministry  in  the  spring  of  1704,  result  in  the  relief  of  De- 
foe's family  by  a  sum  sent  from  the  treasury,  and,  four  months 
later,  in  his  release  from  prison  ;  his  bond  for  good  behavior 
is  still  in  force,  and  some  conditions  are  imposed  on  his  lib- 
eration ;  he  retires  for  a  time  to  St.  Edmund's  Bury,  returns 
to  London  in  October,  1 704,  and  in  November  publishes  a 
pamphlet  entitled  Giving  Alms  no  Charity ;  during  1705 
he  publishes  The  Consolidate,  or  "Memoirs  of  Sundry 
Transactions  from  the  World  in  the  Moon,"  and  enters  into 
a  correspondence  with  Lord  Halifax,  which  shows  that  Defoe 
was  then  receiving,  through  one  of  the  Whig  junto,  financial 
aid  from  some  "unknown  benefactor;  "  he  is  employed  by 
Harley,  then  Secretary  of  State,  "in  several  honorable 
though  secret  services  ;  "  takes  part  in  the  political  campaign 
of  1705,  writing  a  satire  The  Dyet  of  Poland,  attacking 
the  high  church  party;  in  1706  he  publishes  "The  True 
Relation  of  the  Apparition  of  One  Mrs.  Veal  "  and  a  polit- 
ical satire  in  twelve  books  of  verse,  entitled  "Jure  Divino  ;  " 
the  common  story  that  "  Mrs.  Veal  "  was  written  to  help  ad- 
vertise Drelincourt's  book  on  the  '  Fear  of  Death '  has  been 
proved  false;  in  the  autumn  of  1706  Defoe  is  sent  by  the 
ministry  as  a  secret  agent  to  Scotland  to  aid  in  negotiations 


DEFOE  147 

looking  to  the  Union,  and  kisses  the  Queen's  hand  on  his  ap- 
pointment ;  he  publishes  six  essays  ' '  Toward  Removing 
National  Prejudices  "  against  the  measure  in  both  countries; 
he  remains  in  Scotland  through  1707,  is  consulted  on  ques- 
tions of  trade,  is  once  threatened  by  a  mob,  and  defends  him- 
self against  the  charge  of  dependence  on  the  ministry  with 
some  equivocation  ;  he  is  still  persecuted  by  his  creditors, 
though  he  had  surrendered  to  the  commissioners  appointed  for 
the  relief  of  debtors ;  upon  Harley's  ejection  from  the  minis- 
try, Defoe  offers  his  services  to  Godolphin,  Harley's  bitter 
enemy,  is  accepted,  and  again  is  sent  to  Scotland  in  1708  ; 
for  a  time  he  prints  the  Review  in  both  Edinburgh  and  Lon- 
don, and  makes  a  pretence  of  intending  to  settle  in  Scotland ; 
he  supports  Godolphin  through  the  Review  in  the  elections 
of  1708,  and  attacks  Sacheverell  so  vehemently  that  Defoe  is 
threatened  with  assassination  ;  on  Godolphin's  dismissal  Defoe 
is  "providentially  cast  back  upon  his  original  benefactor" 
(Harley),  as  he  puts  it ;  the  Review  suddenly  changes  its  spirit 
to  correspond  with  Defoe's  partial  political  somersault  ;  in 
October,  1710,  he  publishes  two  essays,  "  Public  Credit  "  and 
"Loans,"  both  so  clearly  in  Harley's  interest  that  they  are 
attributed  to  Harley  ;  Defoe  now  so  strongly  urges  acqui- 
escence in  the  peace  (condemned  by  the  Whigs)  that  Mesna- 
ger,the  French  agent,  translates  one  of  Defoe's  pamphlets  into 
French  and  sends  him  one  hundred  pistoles  ;  the  Review  is  in- 
jured by  the  new  tax,  imposed  in  1712,  but  Defoe  continues 
its  publication  through  one  more  volume,  eloquently  asserting 
his  independence  and  his  suffering  in  the  cause  of  truth,  and 
then  discontinues  the  Review,  to  become  the  principal  contribu- 
tor to  the  Mercator,  issued  in  Harley's  (then  Lord  Oxford's) 
interest;  he  is  again  sent  to  Scotland  in  the  latter  part  of  1712, 
where  he  writes  several  anti -Jacobite  pamphlets  under  osten- 
sibly Jacobite  titles,  such  as  Reasons  against  the  Succession 
of  the  House  of  Hanover,  What  if  the  Pretender  Should 
Come,  etc.  ;  these  pamphlets  offend  the  Whigs,  who  now 


148  DEFOE 

regard  Defoe  as  a  hireling  renegade  ;  he  is  prosecuted  for  li- 
bel, the  pamphlets  are  declared  treasonable,  and  he  is  impris- 
oned, April  22,  1713.,  but  immediately  secures  a  pardon  under 
the  great  seal ;  he  continues  to  write  pamphlets  and  to  con- 
tribute to  the  Mercator  in  Oxford's  interest ;  in  a  "  Letter 
to  the  Dissenters"  (December,  1713)  he  exhorts  them  to 
neutrality;  in  April,  1714,  he  replies  in  "The  Public  Spirit 
of  the  Whigs,"  to  Swift's  attack  on  the  Scots,  and  defends 
Oxford  in  a  tract ;  Defoe  is  engaged  by  one  Hunt,  a  book- 
seller, to  issue  a  periodical  called  The  Flying  Sheet,  in  oppo- 
sition to  one  already  published  under  that  title  ;  in  its  pages 
Defoe  attacks  Lord  Annesley,  and  is  again  prosecuted  for 
libel ;  while  his  trial  is  pending  he  writes  (September,  1714) 
his  "Appeal  to  Honour  and  Justice,"  his  "Advice  to  the 
People  of  Great  Britain,"  and  "A  Secret  History  of  One 
Year  "  (the  first  year  of  William's  reign)  ;  he  is  severely  ill 
early  in  1715,  but  in  March  he  publishes  his  "Family  In- 
structor," a  book  of  450  pages,  presumably  written  earlier  ; 
in  July,  1715,  he  publishes  "A  History  of  the  Wars  of  His 
Present  Majesty,  Charles  XII.,  King  of  Sweden,"  and  in  the 
same  month  is  convicted  of  libel  on  Lord  Annesley ;  A 
Hymn  to  the  Mob  and  other  pamphlets  appear  soon  after- 
ward;  in  November,  1715,  when  his  fellow-convicts  are  im- 
prisoned, Defoe  escapes  punishment  by  proposing,  through 
Judge  Parker,  to  enter  the  employ  of  the  government  under 
Townshend,  then  Secretary  of  State  ;  his  proposal  is  accepted, 
and  from  May,  1716,  till  September,  1720,  he  publishes  a 
monthly  paper  called  Mercurius  Politicus,  at  the  same  time 
contributing  to  the  News  Letter,  a  high  church  journal,  cir- 
culated only  in  manuscript,  of  which  Defoe  owned  a  part ; 
he  also  aids,  during  the  same  period,  in  managing  Mist's 
Journal,  a  Jacobite  organ,  started  in  1716  ;  Defoe  appears  in 
Mist 's  Journal  as  a  translator  of  foreign  news,  but  his  au- 
thorship is  suspected  because  of  "  his  art  in  forging  a  story 
and  imposing  it  on  the  world  for  truth  ;  "  he  also  starts  the 


DEFOE  149 

WJiitehall  Evening  Post,  a  tri-weekly  journal,  in  1718,  and 
writes  for  it  till  June,  1720;  in  October,  1719,  he  starts  the 
Daily  Post,  for  which  he  writes  till  1725  ;  he  contributes 
also  to  Applebee1  s  Journal  from  1720  to  1726;  all  these 
contributions  and  pamphlets,  after  1709,  were  anonymous, 
as  Defoe  was  regarded  as  a  renegade  ;  he  practically  allowed 
himself  to  pass  for  a  traitor  or,  more  properly,  a  spy  ;  he  dis- 
played wonderful  versatility,  writing  on  the  widest  variety  of 
topics,  but  generally  avoiding  political  themes  during  the 
later  years  of  his  journalism  ;  he  publishes  the  first  volume  of 
"  Robinson  Crusoe  "  April  25,  1719,  and  sells  it  to  one  Tay- 
lor, who  sells  four  editions  in  five  months ;  Defoe  publishes 
the  second  volume  August  8,  1719  ;  in  1720  he  publishes 
"  Serious  Reflections  during  the  Life  of  Robinson  Crusoe  ;  " 
"Robinson  Crusoe"  becomes  marvellously  popular,  is  ten 
times  pirated  and  imitated,  is  translated  into  many  languages, 
and  is  "  bought  by  every  old  woman  and  left  to  her  family  as 
a  legacy  with  '  Pilgrim's  Progress  ;  '  "  between  the  first  and 
second  editions  of  "  Robinson  Crusoe  "  Defoe  publishes  "  The 
Anatomy  of  Exchange  Alley,"  an  attack  on  stock-jobbers, 
and  "  The  Chimera,"  an  attack  on  John  Law's  financial 
schemes ;  he  writes  several  short  fictitious  stories  of  criminals 
in  1719,  and,  in  1720,  publishes  "  The  Adventures  of  Captain 
Singleton  ' '  and  ' '  Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier ;  "  "  Moll  Flan- 
ders," "  Colonel  Jacque,"  and  "  The  Journal  of  the  Plague" 
all  appear  in  1722,  "Roxana"  in  1724,  and  "A  New  Voy- 
age Round  the  World"  in  1725;  in  his  own  view,  Defoe 
was,  in  his  stories  of  harlots  and  vagabonds,  a  sincere  and 
zealous  moralist ;  in  1725  and  1727  he  published  two  volumes 
of  "  The  Complete  English  Tradesman  "  and  "  The  Use  and 
Abuse  of  the  Marriage  Bed;  "  during  1726  appeared  "  The 
Political  History  of  the  Devil,"  "A  System  of  Logic,"  "An 
Essay  on  the  Reality  of  Apparitions,"  and  several  other 
books ;  after  1725  Defoe  wrote  under  the  pseudonym  of  "  An- 
drew Moreton  ;"  he  appears  at  this  period  to  have  been  fairly 


150  DEFOE 

prosperous,  for  he  had  "a  very  handsome  house"  at  Stoke 
Newington,  and  he  invested  a  thousand  pounds  for  an  estate 
for  his  daughter  Hannah  in  1722  ;  he  appears  to  have  been 
commercially  engaged  in  1726;  during  1729  some  catastro- 
phe of  unknown  character  befell  Defoe,  compelling  him  to 
make  over  all  his  property  to  his  son,  to  go  into  hiding,  and 
to  fear  violence;  it  is  surmised  that  his  "  wicked,  perjured, 
and  contemptible  enemy"  was  Mist,  the  editor  of  Mist's 
Journal,  who  had  discovered  Defoe's  former  duplicity,  had 
escaped  from  imprisonment  to  France,  and  had,  perhaps,  in- 
formed the  English  Government  of  Defoe's  double-dealing ; 
Defoe's  last  writing  was  "An  Effectual  Scheme  for  the  Im- 
mediate Preventing  of  Street  Robberies,"  published  in  1731 ; 
he  died  "  of  a  lethargy  "  in  Ropemaker's  Alley,  Moorfields, 
London,  April  26,  1731,  and  was  buried  in  Bunhill  Fields, 
where  an  obelisk  was  erected  to  his  memory  in  1870;  he  is 
known  to  have  written  at  least  254  books,  besides  countless 
pamphlets  and  contributions  to  journals. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON    DEFOE'S   STYLE. 

Masson,  D.,  "  British  Novelists."     Boston,  1892,  W.  Small,  87-106. 
Chalmers,  G.,  "  Life  of  Defoe. "     Oxford,  1841,  Talboys,  i:    1-118. 
Scott,  Sir  W.,  "Prose  Works."     Edinburgh,  1870,  Black,  4:   228-296. 
Wilson,  W.,  "  Memoirs  of  Defoe."     London,  1830,   Hurst  &  Co.,  v., 

index. 
Dawson,  G.,   "Biographical  Lectures."      London,   1886,   Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  125-141. 
Minto,  W.,  "English  Prose  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 

349-361. 
Stephen,  L.,  "  Hours  in  a  Library."     New  York,  1894,  Putnam,  i :   i- 

47- 
Taine,   H.   A.,   "History  of   English    Literature."     New  York,    1874, 

Holt,  2  :  393-400  and  v.,  index. 
Dennis,  J.,  "  Studies  in  English  Literature."     London,   1876,  Stanford, 

77-88. 
Foster,  J.,  "Critical  Essays."     London,  1875,  Bell  &  Sons. 


DEFOE  151 

Jeaffreson,  J.   C.,   "Novels  and   Novelists."     London,  1858,  Hurst  & 

Blackett,  i :  65-85. 
Mitchell,    D.    G.,    "Old    Story  Tellers."     New  York,    1878,   Scribner, 

198-218. 
Tuckerman,  H.  T.,  "Essays."     Boston,  1857,  Phillips,  Sampson  &  Co., 

285-303. 

\Votton,  M.  E.,  "Word  Portraits."     London,  1887,  Bentley,  83-86. 
Chadwick,  W.,  "  Life  and  Times  of  Defoe."     London,  1859,  J.  R.  Smith. 
Wright,  Thos.,  "  Life  of  Defoe."     New  York,  1894,  Randolph. 
Knight,  Charles,  "Gallery  of  Portraits."     London,    1837,  C.   Knight  & 

Co.,  7:    1 12-120. 
Craik,    G.    L.,    "History   of   English  Literature."     New    York,    1869, 

Scribner,  270-273. 
Macaulay,  T.    B.,  "  Miscellaneous  Works."     New  York,  1880,  Harper, 

i:    116. 
Gosse,  E.,  "  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  Literature."     New  York, 

1889,  Macmillan,  176-185. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  203-208. 

Russell,  W.  C.,  "  The  Book  of  Authors. "     London,  n.  d.,  Warne,  91-133. 
Stephen,  L.,    "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."     New  York,  1888, 

Macmillan,  14  :   280-292. 
Encyclopaedia  Britannica.     Boston,  1877,  Little,   Brown  &  Co.,  7  :   27- 

30  (G.  S.  A.). 
L'Estrange,    A.    G.,    "History   of   English    Humor."     London,    1878, 

Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :   22-44. 

North  American  Rwiew,  78:   277-279  (H.  T.  Tuckerman). 
Blackwoofs  Magazine,  106:  457-487. 
Edinburgh  Rei'ieui,  82,  480-533;    50:   397-425. 
British  Quarterly  Review,  27:   85-105;    50:   483-519  (W.  Lee). 
Christian  Examiner,  71  :   340—353- 
Every  Saturday,  5  :   453-464. 

Congregational  Magazine,  13  :    1-7  and  57-64  (Walter  Wilson). 
Westminster  Review,  13:   69-85  (Walter  Wilson). 
Dublin  University  Magazine,  48:    57-71. 
Retrospective  Review',  3  :   354-379  ;  6  :    1-20. 
Southern  Re^'^eu',  7:   68-101  (Walter  Wilson). 
Eclectic  Magazine,  74  :   366-371. 
Corn  hill  Magazine,  23  :   310-320. 

LitteWs  Living  Age,  29:   49-64  (Chambers) ;  50:   513-526. 
Spectator,  74:  210. 
London  Quarterly  Review,  57  :  345-370. 


I  $2  DEFOE 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Minuteness. — Defoe  is  the  master-narrator.  In  his 
most  purely  fictitious  productions  he  notes  so  minutely 
every  circumstance  that  it  has  all  the  preciseness  of  history. 
Leslie  Stephen  calls  his  novels  "  simple  history  minus  the 
facts."  His  "Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier,"  the  pretended  jour- 
nal of  a  soldier  in  the  English  Revolution,  deceived  so  acute 
a  critic  as  Lord  Chatham,  while  his  "  Journal  of  the  Plague  " 
and  certain  of  his  ironical  writings  were  taken  for  earnest  by 
some  of  the  ablest  men  of  the  day.  He  is  really  the  inventor 
of  the  realistic  novel.  He  throws  such  an  air  of  reality  over 
the  creations  of  his  fancy  that  the  reader  is  involuntarily  sur- 
prised into  a  persuasion  of  their  truth.  He  has  a  rare  power 
of  putting  himself  thoroughly  in  the  place  of  the  fictitious 
persons  whom  he  invents.  Concerning  his  "  unflinching 
realism,"  Minto  declares  that  "none  of  our  writers,  not 
even  Shakespeare,  shows  half  such  a  knowledge  of  the  cir- 
cumstances of  life  among  different  ranks  and  conditions  of 
men  :  none  of  them  has  realized  with  fidelity  how  so  many 
different  persons  lived  and  moved." 

"  His  labor  has  been  expended  on  making  his  narrative 
minutely  circumstantial  —  his  reflection  of  life  a  picture 
of  unparalleled  fidelity  and  detail.  He  is  incomparably 
graphic  and  impressive.  He  produces  his  effects  not  by 
ponderous  epithets  or  impressive  reflections,  but  by  the  ac- 
cumulation of  striking  details  in  homely  language." — Minto. 

"  If  Swift,  in  his  fictions,  is  the  satirist  of  the  age,  De- 
foe, in  most  of  his,  is  its  chronicler  or  newspaper  reporter. 
Minuteness  of  imagined  circumstance  and  filling  up 
the  power  of  fiction  in  fac -simile  of  nature  is  Defoe's  unfailing 
characteristic. ' ' — Masson. 

"  Defoe  had  the  kind  of  mind  suitable  to  such  a  hard  ser- 
vice, solid,  exact,  entirely  destitute  of  refinement,  enthusiasm, 


DEFOE  153 

agreeableness.  .  .  .  Even  in  fiction  his  information  is 
as  precise  as  in  history.  He  gives  dates,  year,  month,  and 
day ;  notes  the  wind,  northeast,  southwest,  northwest ;  he 
writes  a  log-book,  an  invoice,  attorney's  and  shopkeeper's 
bills,  the  number  of  moidores,  interest,  specie  payments, 
payments  in  kind,  cost  and  sale  prices,  the  share  of  the 
king,  of  religious  houses,  partners,  brokers,  net  totals,  statis- 
tics. ...  It  seems  as  if  our  author  had  performed 
all  Crusoe's  labors,  so  exactly  does  he  describe  them,  with 
numbers,  quantities,^dimensions,  like  a  carpenter,  potter,  or 
an  old  tar.  The  geography  and  hydrography  of  the  island 
are  so  given  '  that  the  reader  is  tempted  to  take  an  atlas 
and  draw  for  himself  a  map  of  the  place,  to  enter  into  all 
the  details  of  the  history,  and  to  see  the  objects  as  clearly  and 
fully  as  the  author.'  " — Taine. 

"There  is  all  the  minute  detail  of  a  log-book  in  it 
['  Crusoe  '].  .  .  .  It  is  like  reading  evidence  in  a  court  of 
justice." — Lamb. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  My  brother's  house  had  a  little  court  before  it  and  a  brick 
wall  and  a  gate  in  it,  and  within  that  several  warehouses,  where 
his  goods  of  several  sorts  lay.  It  happened  that  in  one  of  these 
warehouses  were  several  packs  of  women's  high-crowned  hats, 
which  came  out  of  the  country,  and  were,  as  I  suppose,  for  ex- 
portation, whither  I  know  not."— Journal  of  the  Plague. 

11  While  I  was  at  Chester  we  had  some  small  skirmishes  with 
Sir  William  Brereton.  One  morning  in  particular  Sir  William 
drew  up  and  faced  us  ;  and  one  of  our  colonels  of  horse  ob- 
serving the  enemy  to  be  not,  as  he  thought,  above  two  hundred, 
desired  leave  of  Prince  Rupert  to  attack  them  with  a  like  num- 
ber, and  accordingly  he  sallied  out  with  two  hundred  horse.  I 
stood  drawn  up  without  the  city  with  eight  hundred  more,  ready 
to  bring  him  off  if  he  should  be  put  to  the  worst,  which  happened 
accordingly." — Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier. 


1 54  DEFOE 

"  Before  I  set  up  my  tent,  I  drew  a  half-circle  before  the  hol- 
low place,  which  took  in  about  ten  yards  in  its  semi-diameter 
from  the  rock  and  twenty  yards  in  its  diameter  from  its  begin- 
ning and  ending.  ...  In  this  half-circle  I  pitched  two  rows 
of  strong  stakes,  driving  them  into  the  ground  till  they  stood  very 
firm  like  pikes,  the  biggest  end  being  out  of  the  ground  above 
five  feet  and  a  half  and  sharpened  on  the  top.  The  two  rows 
did  not  stand  above  six  inches  from  one  another." — Robinson 
Crusoe. 


2.  Homeliness. — By  this  we  mean  something  more  than 
simplicity.  Defoe  continually  uses  old-fashioned  phrases  and 
the  homely  idioms  of  the  street.  He  writes  like  a  man  of 
business  rather  than  an  artist.  Tuckerman  well  calls  him  •  •  a 
man  of  the  people,  a  writer  of  plain,  vigorous,  unembellished 
English."  His  independence  of  artistic  rules  appears  also  in 
the  whimsical  coinages  found  here  and  there. 

"  The  use  of  homely  language  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
features  of  Defoe's  style.  It  is  one  of  the  secrets  of  the  con- 
tinued popularity  of  '  Robinson  Crusoe. '  .  .  .  His  humor 
consists  in  the  application  of  very  homely  language  to  affairs 
usually  treated  with  stiff  dignity.  ...  As  suited  to 
the  vigorous  popular  style,  his  preference  was  for  the  homely 
and  even  the  coarse.  His  allusions  are  sometimes  learned, 
but  always  easily  understood  from  the  homeliness  of  the 
expression.  .  .  .  Defoe  describes  his  own  style  as  his 
'  natural  infirmity  of  homely  plain  writing.'  " — Minto. 

"  Defoe's  one  great  aim  in  all  his  works  is  to  destroy  the 
illusion  of  romance  and  to  write  as  though  he  were  telling 
in  homely  language  a  narrative  of  ordinary  life. 
There  have  been  greater  novelists,  but  not  one  who  has 
shown  more  skill  in  the  management  of  his  materials  or 
produced  so  fine  an  effect  from  the  accumulation  of  prosaic 
details." — Dennis. 

"  The  style  of  Defoe  is  plain  and  homely,  but  expressive,  di- 


DEFOE  155 

reel,  and  manly.  It  may  be  described  as  thoroughly  English. 
It  reflected  the  character  of  his  mind,  and  bespoke  the  man 
of  firm  resolve  and  unshaken  integrity.  .  .  .  His  lan- 
guage is  always  that  of  the  plain,  unlettered  person  he  pro- 
fesses himself:  homely  in  phraseology,  in  expression  rude  and 
artificial,  yet  forcible,  happy,  and  strongly  descriptive.  .  .  . 
Even  Defoe's  deficiencies  in  style,  his  homeliness  of  language, 
his  rusticity  of  thought,  expressive  of  what  is  called  the  Crassa 
Minerva,  seem  to  claim  credit  for  him  as  one  who  speaks  the 
truth."— Sir  Walter  Scoff. 

"  In  his  works  of  imagination  his  almost  constant  charac- 
teristic is  a  simplicity  and  plainness,  which,  if  there  be  any 
affectation  about  it  at  all,  is  chargeable  only  with  that  of  a 
homeliness  sometimes  approaching  to  that  of  rusticity." — G. 
L.  Craik. 

"  He  drew  upon  his  knowledge  of  low  English  life,  framing 
imaginary  histories  of  thieves,  courtesans,  buccaneers,  and 
the  like  of  the  kind  to  suit  a  coarse  popular  taste." — David 
Mas  son. 

"  His  imagination  was  that  of  a  man  of  business,  not 
of  an  artist,  crammed  and,  as  it  were,  jammed  down  with 
facts.  He  tells  them  as  they  come  to  him,  without  arrange- 
ment or  style,  like  a  conversation,  without  dreaming  of  pro- 
ducing an  effect  or  composing  a  phrase,  employing  technical 
terms  and  vulgar  forms,  repeating  himself  at  need,  using  the 
same  thing  two  or  three  times,  not  seeming  to  suspect  that 
there  are  methods  of  amusing,  touching,  engrossing,  or  pleas- 
ing, with  no  desire  but  to  pour  out  on  paper  the  fulness  of 
the  information  with  which  he  is  charged." — Taine. 

"  His  style  is  everywhere  beautiful,  but  plain  and  homely. 
'  Robinson  Crusoe '  is  delightful  to  all  ranks  and  classes  ;  but 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  it  is  written  in  a  phraseology  peculiarly 
adapted  to  the  lower  conditions  of  readers." — Lamb. 


1 56  DEFOE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  We  have  been  huffed  and  bullied  with  your  Act  of  Tolera- 
tion ;  you  have  told  us  that  you  are  the  Church  established  by 
law,  as  well  as  others  ;  have  set  up  your  canting  synagogues  at 
our  church  doors,  and  the  church  and  members  have  been  loaded 
with  reproaches,  with  oaths,  associations,  abjurations,  and  what 
not." —  The  Shortest  Way  with  Dissenters. 

"  The  girl  has  scarce  been  a  week,  nay,  a  day  in  her  service, 
but  a  committee  of  servant-wenches  are  appointed  to  examine 
her,  who  advise  her  to  raise  her  wages  or  give  warning ;  to  en- 
courage to  which  the  herb-woman  or  chandler-woman  or  some 
other  old  intelligencer  provides  her  a  place  of  four  or  five  pounds 
a  year ;  this  sets  Madam  cock-a-hoop,  and  she  thinks  of  nothing 
now  but  veils  and  high  wages,  and  so  gives  warning  from  place 
to  place  till  she  had  got  her  wages  up  to  the  tip-top." — Every- 
body's Business. 

"  But  the  greatest  abuse  of  all  is.  that  these  creatures  are  be- 
come their  own  law-givers  ;  nay,  I  think  they  are  ours  too,  though 
nobody  would  imagine  that  such  a  set  of  slatterns  should  bam- 
boozle a  whole  nation." — Everybody's  fiusiness. 

3.  Realism — Verisimilitude. — "  He  was,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  liar  that  ever  lived.  .  .  .  He  has  absolute  com- 
mand over  the  scaffolding  and  carpentry  of  realism.  .  .  . 
The  realism,  the  unvarnished  attention  to  minute  fact,  is  just 
what  preserves  their  [his  novels']  interest." — Edmund  Gosse. 

11  To  Defoe  was  given  a  tongue  to  which  no  one  could  listen 
without  believing  every  word  he  uttered.  His  unrivalled 
skill  in  mystification  has  made  it  difficult  to  distinguish  the 
purely  fictitious  from  the  authentic  part  of  his  admitted  nar- 
ratives, and  in  some  places  to  separate  genuine  histories  from 
stories  composed  by  him.  .  .  .  He  had  the  most  marvel- 
lous power  ever  known  "of  giving  verisimilitude  to  fiction.  In 
other  words,  he  had  the  most  amazing  talent  on  record  for 
telling  lies." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"The  subject  [of  '  Robinson  Crusoe']  was  one  admirably 


DEFOE  157 

adapted  for  Defoe's  genius.  The  patient  ingenuity  with 
which  he  piles  detail  on  detail,  his  thorough  identification  of 
himself  with  his  hero,  even  the  wearisome  and  commonplace 
religious  meditations  interspersed  through  the  book,  combine 
to  give  it  such  a  reality  that  in  reading  it  the  insight  and 
genius  necessary  to  produce  such  a  result  fall  out  of  view,  and 
we  imagine  ourselves  attending  to  the  wonderful  adventures  of 
a  veritable  English  sailor,  and  possessing  more  than  the 
average  proportion  of  the  ordinary  English  faculty  of  adapt- 
ing himself  with  as  good  a  grace  as  possible  to  any  situation. 
.  His  '  Journal  of  the  Plague  '  is  so  minute,  so  cir- 
cumstantial, so  exactly  like  reality,  that  it  was  believed  by 
Dr.  Mead  to  be  the  work  of  a  medical  man." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  On  the  whole,  however,  it  was  his  own  robust  sense  of 
reality  that  led  him  to  his  style.  ...  In  his  representa- 
tions of  English  ragamuffin  life  there  is  nothing  of  allegory, 
poetry,  or  even  of  didactic  purpose ;  all  is  hard,  prosaic,  and 
matter-of-fact,  as  in  newspaper  paragraphs.  .  .  .  It  is  in 
the  true  spirit  of  a  realist,  also,  that  Defoe,  though  he  is  usually 
plain  and  prosaic,  yet,  when  the  facts  to  be  reported  are  strik- 
ing or  horrible,  rises  easily  to  their  level.  .  .  .  It  is  evi- 
dent that  no  man  ever  possessed  a  stronger  imagination  of  that 
kind  which,  a  situation  being  once  conceived,  teems  with  cir- 
cumstances in  exact  keeping  with  it.  ...  Defoe's  match- 
less power  of  inventing  circumstantial  incidents  made  him 
more  a  master  even  of  its  poetic  capabilities  than  the  rarest 
poet  then  living  could  have  been." — David  Mas  son. 

"  Never  was  such  a  sense  of  the  real,  before  or  since.  Our 
realists  of  to-day,  painters,  anatomists,  who  enter  deliberately 
on  their  business,  are  very  far  from  this  naturalness  ;  art  and 
calculation  crop  out  amidst  their  too  minute  descriptions. 
Defoe  creates  illusion  ;  for  it  is  not  the  eye  which  deceives 
us  but  the  mind,  and  that  literally.  His  account  of  the  great 
plague  has  more  than  once  passed  for  true ;  and  Lord  Chatham 
mistook  his  '  Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier  '  for  an  authentic  nar- 


1 58  DEFOE 

rative.  This  was  his  aim.  In  the  preface  to  the  old  edition 
of  '  Robinson  Crusoe  '  it  is  said  :  '  The  story  is  told,  .  .  . 
to  the  instruction  of  others  by  this  example,  and  to  justify 
and  honor  the  wisdom  of  Providence.  The  editor  believes 
the  thing  to  be  a  just  history  of  facts;  neither  is  there  any 
appearance  of  fiction  in  it.'  All  his  talents  lie  in  this,  and 
thus  even  his  imperfections  aid  him  ;  his  lack  of  art  becomes 
a  profound  art ;  his  negligence,  repetition,  prolixity,  con- 
tribute to  the  illusion  ;  we  cannot  imagine  that  such  and  such 
a  detail,  so  minute,  so  dull,  is  invented  ;  an  inventor  would 
have  suppressed  it ;  it  is  too  tedious  to  have  been  put  in  on 
purpose ;  art,  therefore,  cannot  have  piled  up  this  heap  of  dull 
and  vulgar  accidents;  it  is  the  truth." — Tainc. 

"  No  writer  of  fictitious  narrative  has  ever  excelled  him  in 
at  least  one  prime  excellence — the  air  of  reality  which  he 
throws  over  the  creations  of  his  fancy ;  an  effect  proceeding 
from  the  strength  of  conception  with  which  he  enters  into  the 
scenes,  adventures,  and  characters  he  undertakes  to  describe." 
—  G.  L.  Craik. 

"  Defoe  has  a  power  of  circumstantial  invention,  an  un- 
rivalled genius  for  dyeing  like  truth.  .  .  .  He  has  often 
been  quoted  as  a  first  -  hand  authority  in  matters  of  his- 
tory. .  .  .  He  was  a  great,  a  truly  great  liar,  perhaps 
the  greatest  liar  that  ever  lived." — Minto. 

"  The  general  charm  attached  to  the  romance  of  Defoe  is 
chiefly  to  be  ascribed  to  the  unequalled  dexterity  with  which 
he  has  given  an  appearance  of  reality  to  the  incidents  which 
he  narrates." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"Verisimilitude  is  the  great  merit  of  Defoe  as  a  novelist. 
The  seeming  authenticity  of  his  stories  is  also  greatly  enhanced 
by  the  autobiographic  form  in  which  they  are  cast.  He  is 
a  model  narrator ;  passages  of  his  fiction  read  like  testimony 
elicited  in  a  court  of  justice  ;  and  incidental  and  apparently 
trifling  circumstances  are  so  naturally  interwoven  as  to  give  a 
singular  air  of  truth  to  the  whole. " — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 


DEFOE  159 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  could  dwell  a  great  while  on  the  calamities  of  this  dreadful 
time,  and  go  on  to  describe  the  objects  that  appeared  among  us 
every  day,  the  dreadful  extravagances  which  the  distraction  of 
sick  people  drove  them  into  ;  how  the  streets  began  now  to  be 
fuller  of  frightful  objects  and  families  to  be  made  even  a  terror 
to  themselves  ;  but  after  I  have  told  you,  as  I  have  above,  that 
one  man  being  tied  in  his  bed  and  finding  no  other  way  to  deliver 
himself,  set  the  bed  on  fire  with  his  candle,  which  unhappily 
stood  within  his  reach,  and  burnt  himself  in  bed  ;  and  how  an- 
other, by  the  insufferable  torment  he  bore,  danced  and  sung 
naked  in  the  streets,  not  knowing  one  ecstasy  from  another  ;  I 
say,  after  I  have  mentioned  these  things,  what  can  be  added 
more  ?  " — The  Plague  in  London. 

"  We  had  but  little  time  to  consult ;  but  being  in  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal inns  of  the  town,  we  presently  ordered  the  gates  of  the  inn 
to  be  shut,  and  sent  to  all  the  inns  where  our  men  were  quartered 
to  do  the  like,  with  orders  if  they  had  any  back-doors  or  ways  to 
get  out,  to  come  to  us.  By  this  means,  however,  we  got  so  much 
time  as  to  get  on  horseback,  and  so  many  of  our  men  came  to  us 
by  back-ways  that  we  had  near  three  hundred  horse  in  the  yards 
and  places  behind  the  house  ;  and  now  we  began  to  think  of  break- 
ing out  by  a  lane  which  led  from  the  back  part  of  the' inn  ;  but 
a  new  accident  determined  us  another  though  a  worse  way." — 
Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier. 

"  I  cannot  here  omit  one  very  remarkable  instance  of  the  Cath- 
olic zeal  of  that  Prince,  which  I  was  soon  after  an  eye-wit- 
ness of.  I  was  at  that  time  in  the  fruit-market,  when  the  King 
passing  by  in  his  coach,  the  host,  whether  by  accident  or  con- 
trivance, I  cannot  say,  was  brought  at  that  very  juncture  out  of 
the  great  church,  in  order,  as  I  after  understood,  to  a  poor 
sick  woman's  receiving  the  sacrament.  On  sight  of  the  host,  the 
king  came  out  of  his  coach,  kneeled  down  in  the  street,  which  at 
that  time  proved  to  be  very  dirty,  till  the  host  passed  by  ;  then 
rose  up,  and  taking  the  lighted  flambeau  from  him  who  bore  it, 
he  followed  the  priest  up  a  straight  nasty  alley,  and  then  up  a 
dark  ordinary  pair  of  stairs,  where  the  poor  sick  woman  lay. 
There  he  stayed  till  the  whole  ceremony  was  over,  when,  return- 


l6o  DEFOE 

ing  to  the  door  of  the  church,  he  very  faithfully  returned  the 
lighted  flambeau  to  the  fellow  he  had  taken  it  from,  the  people 
all  the  while  crying  out,  '  Viva,  Viva!'  an  acclamation,  we  may 
imagine,  intended  to  his  zeal  as  well  as  his  person." — Memoirs  of 
Captain  Carleton. 

4.  Undisguised  Sarcasm. — "  No  one  can  doubt  for  a 
moment  that  Defoe  was  a  decided  master  of  ridicule,  and 
that,  however  his  adversaries  might  affect  to  despise,  they 
were  as  little  able  to  endure  his  wit  as  to  cope  with  his  argu- 
ments. .  .  .  He  possessed  a  large  share  of  that  dry, 
caustic  wit  which  gave  a  peculiar  force  to  his  language  and 
told  more  significantly  than  whole  pages  of  sentiment.  .  .  . 
When  his  opponents  argue  fairly,  he  reasons  with  acuteness, 
vigor,  and  judgment ;  but  when  they  lose  their  temper,  he 
laughs  at  their  weakness,  and  answers  their  railings  by  sarcasm. 
.  This  satire  ['  Speculum  Cr ape -G  aw  no  mm  ']  gave  an 
earnest  of  those  sarcastic  powers  that  were  unfolded  by  Defoe 
in  his  subsequent  writings.  .  .  .  The  keen-ness  of  our 
author's  satire  brought  upon  him  a  host  of  enemies." — Wal- 
ter Wilson. 

"  He  is  a  great  master  of  the  language  of  sarcasm  and 
abuse.  He  deals  in  the  same  kind  of  undisguised  banter  as 
Macaulay ;  only  he  is  more  exuberant,  stands  less  upon  his 
dignity,  hits  fearlessly  at  greater  antagonists,  and  altogether 
has  a  more  magnanimous  air.  .  .  .  He  is  more  openly 
derisive  and  less  bitter  than  Addison,  having  no  mastery  of 
the  polite  sneer  ;  he  is  not  a  loving  humorist  like  Steele,  but 
sarcastically  and  derisively  humorous  ;  and  he  is  more  mag- 
nanimous and  less  personal  than  Swift,  dealing  with  public 
not  with  private  conduct,  and  carrying  into  the  warfare  a 
spirit  less  savagely  ferocious." — Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  then  it  comes  out,  with  a  great  many  grieving  aggrava- 
tions to  a  parent,  to  find  himself  tricked  and  defeated  in  the 


DEFOE  l6l 

expectations  of  his  son's  marrying  handsomely  and  to  his  advan- 
tage, instead  of  which  he  is  obliged,  perhaps,  to  receive  a  dish- 
clout  for  a  daughter-in-law,  and  see  his  name  and  family  propa- 
gated by  the  descendants  of  a  race  of  beggars." — The  Complete 
English  Tradesman. 

"  Now  they  find  that  they  are  in  danger  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land's just  resentments  ;  now  they  cry  out  peace,  union,  forbear- 
ance, and  charity,  as  if  the  Church  had  not  too  long  harboured 
her  enemies  under  her  wing,  and  nourished  the  viperous  brood, 
till  they  hiss  and  fly  in  the  face  of  the  mother  that  cherished 
them." — The  Shortest  Way  with  Dissenters. 

"  But  once  set  the  Pretender  upon  the  throne,  and  let  the 
funds  be  but  happily  stopped  and  paid  into  his  hands,  that  he 
may  be  in  no  more  need  of  a  Parliament,  and  all  these  dis- 
tempers will  be  cured  as  effectually  as  a  fever  is  cured  by  cutting 
off  the  head,  or  the  halter  cures  a  bleeding  at  the  nose." — What 
If  the  Pretender  Should  Come? 

5.  Didacticism — Moral  Aim.— "Defoe  professes  to 
write  always  with  a  moral  and  even  with  a  religious  pur- 
pose."— Dennis. 

"  It  must  be  admitted  that  Defoe  tacks  some  kind  of  moral 
to  stories  which  show  no  great  delicacy  of  moral  feeling." — 
Leslie  Stephen. 

"  However  we  regard  his  life,  we  see  only  prolonged  efforts 
and  persecutions.  Joy  seems  to  be  wanting  ;  the  idea  of  the 
beautiful  never  enters.  When  he  comes  to  fiction,  it  is  like  a 
Presbyterian  and  a  plebeian,  with  low  subjects  and  moral  aims, 
to  treat  of  the  adventures  and  reform  the  conduct  of  thieves 
and  prostitutes,  workmen  and  sailors.  His  whole  delight  was 
to  think  that  he  had  a  service  to  perform  and  that  he  was  per- 
forming it." — Taine. 

"  Another  universal  feature  of  his  fiction  is  the  pure  and 
pleasing  morality  constantly  exhibited  in  the  incident  and 
reinforced  by  the  reflections  of  the  author. " — Walter  Wilson. 
ii 


162  DEFOE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  By  this  we  may  see  what  share  fortune  has  in  the  greatest 
events.  In  all  probability  the  Earl  of  Peterborrow  had  never 
engaged  in  such  a  dangerous  affair,  in  cold  blood  and  unprovoked  ; 
and  if  such  an  enterprise  had  been  resolved  on  in  a  regular  way, 
it  is  very  likely  he  might  have  given  the  command  to  some  of  the 
general  officers  :  since  it  is  not  usual  nor  hardly  allowable  for  one 
that  commands  in  chief  to  go  in  person  on  such  kind  of  services." 
— Memoirs  of  Captain  Carleton, 

"  As  I  knew  nothing,  that  night,  of  the  supply  I  was  to  receive 
by  the  providential  driving  of  the  ship  nearer  the  land  by  the 
storms  and  tide,  by  which  I  have  since  been  so  long  nourished 
and  supported,  so  these  three  poor  desolate  men  knew  nothing 
how  certain  of  deliverance  and  supply  they  were,  how  near  it  was 
to  them,  and  how  effectually  and  really  they  were  in  a  condition 
of  safety,  at  the  same  time  that  they  thought  themselves  lost  and 
their  case  desperate.  So  little  do  we  see  before  us  in  the  world, 
and  so  much  reason  have  we  to  depend  cheerfully  upon  the  great 
Maker  of  the  world  that  He  does  not  leave  His  creatures  so  abso- 
lutely destitute  but  that,  in  the  worst  circumstances,  they  have 
always  something  to  be  thankful  for  and  sometimes  are  nearer 
deliverance  than  they  imagine  ;  nay,  are  even  brought  to  their 
deliverance  by  the  means  by  which  they  seem  to  be  brought  to 
their  destruction." — Robinson  Crusoe. 

"  I  must  testify,  from  my  experience,  that  a  temper  of  peace, 
thankfulness,  love,  and  affection,  is  much  the  more  proper  frame 
for  prayer  than  that  of  terror  and  discomposure  ;  and  that  under 
the  dread  of  mischief  impending  a  man  is  no  more  fit  for  a  com- 
forting performance  of  the  duty  of  praying  to  God  than  he  is  for 
a  repentance  on  a  sick  bed  ;  for  these  discomposures  affect  the 
mind,  as  the  others  do  the  body  :  and  the  discomposure  of  the 
mind  must  necessarily  be  as  great  a  disability  as  that  of  the  body, 
and  much  greater  ;  praying  to  God  being  properly  an  act  of  the 
mind,  not  of  the  body." — Robinson  Crusoe. 


DEFOE  163 

6.  Worldly  Wisdom — Sagacity. — "  Sound  common 
sense  and  shrewd  observation  dressed  in  a  lively  and  a  fascinat- 
ing style  are  the  characteristics  of  his  work." — British  Quar- 
terly. 

"  This  ['A  Serious  Inquiry  into  the  Question  of  Conformity 
of  Dissenters']  evinces  much  good  sense,  couched  in  forcible 
yet  becoming  language.  As  a  piece  of  serious  argument  it  is 
irresistible  ;  and  the  adroitness  with  which  he  manages  it 
shows  that  he  was  a  master  of  human  nature  no  less  than  of  his 
subject.  .  .  .  His  sentiments  upon  most  subjects  are  dis- 
tinguished by  good  sense  and  a  profound  acquaintance  with 
human  nature." — Walter  Wilson. 

"  He  displays  especial  subtlety  in  tracing  the  gradual  growth 
of  an  opinion,  or  a  purpose,  from  its  first  suggestion  to  its  full 
development.  This  power  meets  us  in  all  his  work." — Minto. 

"  In  all  his  books  we  find  a  knowledge  of  different  types  of 
society,  especially  among  the  lower  classes,  such  as  has,  perhaps, 
never  been  attained  by  any  [other]  writer." — H.  J.  Nicott. 

"  His  intense  love  for  facts  and  his  very  accurate  and  com- 
prehensive knowledge  and  wide  experience  of  the  world  of 
men,  made  him  of  all  writers  the  one  most  able  to  give  a  true 
picture. " — National  Review. 

"  The  great  peculiarity  of  the  work  ['  Robinson  Crusoe  '] 
is  its  immense  display  of  worldly  wisdom,  and  its  wide  and 
varied  representation  of  the  interests,  motives,  rewards,  and 
considerations  whereby  men  are  actuated  to  their  welfare  or 
their  sorrow." — Chambers's  Papers  for  the  People. — See  Lit- 
tcir  s  Living  Age. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Here  we  may  observe,  and  I  hope  it  will  not  be  amiss  to 
take  notice  of  it,  that  a  near  view  of  death  would  soon  reconcile 
men  of  good  principles  one  to  another,  and  that  it  is  chiefly  ow- 
ing to  our  easy  situation  in  life  and  our  putting  these  things  far 
from  us  that  our  breaches  are  fomented,  ill  blood  continued, 


I 64  DEFOE 

prejudices,  breach  of  charity,  and  of  Christian  union  so  much 
kept  and  so  far  carried  on  among  us  as  it  is  :  another  plague 
year  would  reconcile  all  these  differences  ;  a  close  conversing  with 
death,  or  with  diseases  that  threaten  death,  would  scum  off  the 
gaul  from  our  tempers,  remove  the  animosities  among  us,  and 
bring  us  to  see  with  differing  eyes  than  those  which  we  looked 
on  things  with  before." — The  Plague  in  London. 

"  Nay,  so  eager  was  the  prince  for  fighting  that  when,  from 
the  top  of  Edgehill,  the  enemy's  army  was  descried  in  the  bottom 
between  them  and  the  village  of  Keynton,  and  that  the  enemy 
had  bid  us  defiance  by  discharging  three  cannons,  we  accepted 
the  challenge,  and  answering  with  two  shots  from  our  army,  we 
must  needs  forsake  the  advantage  of  the  hills,  which  they  must 
have  mounted  under  the  command  of  our  cannon,  and  march 
down  to  them  into  the  plain.  I  confess  I  thought  here  was  a 
great  deal  more  gallantry  than  discretion  ;  for  it  was  plain  tak- 
ing an  advantage  out  of  our  hands  and  putting  it  into  the  hands 
of  the  enemy.  An  enemy  that  must  fight  may  always  be  fought 
with  to  advantage.  My  old  hero,  the  glorious  Gustavus  Adol- 
phus,  was  as  forward  to  fight  as  any  man  of  true  valour,  mixt 
with  any  policy,  need  to  be  or  ought  to  be  ;  but  he  used  to  say 
an  enemy  reduced  to  a  necessity  of  fighting  is  half  beaten." — 
Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier, 

"A  tradesman  behind  his  counter  must  have  no  flesh  and 
blood  about  him,  no  passions,  no  resentment ;  he  must  never 
be  angry — no,  not  so  much  as  seem  to  be  so,  if  a  customer 
troubles  him  five  hundred  pounds'  worth  of  goods,  and  scarce 
bids  money  for  anything  ;  nay,  though  they  really  come  to  his  shop 
with  no  intent  to  buy,  as  many  do,  only  to  see  what  is  to  be  sold, 
and  though  he  knows  they  cannot  be  better  pleased  than  they 
are  at  some  other  shop  where  they  intend  to  buy,  'tis  all  one  ; 
the  tradesman  must  take  it,  he  must  place  it  to  the  account  of 
his  calling  that  'tis  his  business  to  be  ill  used  and  resent  noth- 
ing ;  and  so  must  answer  as  obligingly  to  those  who  give  him  an 
hour  or  two's  trouble  and  buy  nothing  as  he  does  to  those  who, 
in  half  the  time,  lay  out  ten  or  twenty  pounds.  The  case  is 
plain  ;  and  if  some  do  give  him  trouble,  and  do  not  buy,  others 
make  amends,  and  do  buy  ;  and  as  for  the  trouble,  'tis  the  busi- 
ness of  the  shop." — The  Complete  English  Tradesman. 


DEFOE  165 

7.  Sincerity  —  Independence.  —  "  There  were  few 
braver  men  in  England  ;  and  hardly  any  were  less  in  bond- 
age to  the  opinions  of  their  neighbors,  for  he  passed  a  life  of 
danger  and  hardship  solely  in  consequence  of  his  determina- 
tion to  think  and  act  for  himself  on  every  possible  occasion  ; 
nor  has  any  writer  thought  for  himself  with  more  persistency 
or  stamped  his  own  character  more  vigorously  on  every  one 
of  his  own  productions." — Chambers's  Papers  for  the  People. 
— See  Litteir s  Living  Age. 

"  All  of  them  [his  works]  bear  the  traces  of  a  sincere, 
earnest,  manly  character  and  of  an  understanding  unusually 
active,  penetrating,  and  well-informed." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  There  is  evidence  from  his  writings  that  he  early  dis- 
covered that  spirit  of  independence  which  terminated  in  an 
unconquerable  love  of  liberty.  His  was  a  soul  of  iron  in  a 
casement  of  adamant.  His  principles  were  of  the  sternest 
character,  and  the  mind  which  formed  them  was  not  to  be 
deterred  from  avowing  them  by  suffering  or  reproach." — 
Walter  Wilson. 

•''A  spirit  of  integrity  and  candor,  a  desire  to  see  fair 
play  and  to  do  justice  to  all  parties — in  a  word,  the  spirit  of 
common  sense  and  common  honesty  runs  through  all  Defoe's 
w  r  i  t  i  ngs . "  — Hazlitt. 

"  He  was  a  brave,  active  man,  who  saw  things  as  they  were 
and  said  what  he  thought ;  a  man  battling  for  liberty,  who 
fought  with  a  wrong-doer,  whether  friend  or  foe ;  the  Ishmael 
of  political  writing." — George  Dawson. 

"  He  worked  for  causes  of  which  he  really  approved  ;  he 
never  sacrificed  the  opinion  to  which  he  was  most  deeply  at- 
tached." — L  eslie  Stcph  en . 

"The  great  charm  of  his  fiction  is  its  truth.  His  convic- 
tions were  grave,  his  observation  minute,  and  his  experience 
of  life  painful,  but  conscience  and  intelligence  were  pro- 
foundly active.  .  .  .  He  was  too  independent  and  too 
much  in  advance  of  his  time  not  to  be  essentially  apart  from 


1 66  DEFOE 

those  who  were  ostensibly  near  and  around  him.  He  was 
driven  into  the  entrenchments  of  conscience.  Like  all  bold 
and  individual  thinkers,  he  was  often  alone." — H.  T.  Tuck- 
erman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  story  of  those  three  men,  if  the  reader  will  be  content 
to  have  me  give  it  in  their  own  persons,  without  taking  upon  me 
to  either  vouch  the  particulars  or  answer  for  any  mistakes,  I 
shall  give  as  distinctly  as  I  can  ;  believing  the  history  will  be  a 
very  good  pattern  for  any  poor  man  to  follow,  in  case  the  like 
public  desolation  should  happen  here  ;  and  if  there  may  be  no 
such  occasion,  which  God  in  his  infinite  mercy  grant  us,  still  the 
story  may  have  its  uses  so  many  ways  as  that  it  will,  I  hope, 
never  be  said  that  the  relating  has  been  unprofitable." — The 
Plague  in  London. 

"  The  prodigious  stupid  bigotry  of  the  people  also  was  irksome 
to  me  ;  I  thought  there  was  something  in  it  very  sordid.  The  en- 
tire empire  the  priests  have  over  both  the  souls  and  bodies  of 
the  people  gave  me  a  specimen  of  that  meanness  of  spirit  which 
is  nowhere  else  to  be  seen  in  Italy,  especially  in  the  city  of 
Rome.  ...  It  must  forever  be  against  them  as  a  brand  of 
infamy  and  as  a  reproach  on  their  whole  nation,  that,  purchased 
by  the  Parliament's  money,  they  sold  their  honesty,  and  rebelled 
against  their  king  for  hire  ;  and  it  was  not  many  years  before,  as 
I  have  said  already,  they  were  fully  paid  the  wages  of  their  un- 
righteousness and  chastised  for  their  treachery  by  the  very  same 
people  whom  they  thus  basely  assisted  ;  then  they  would  have 
retrieved  it,  if  it  had  not  been  too  late." — Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier. 

8.  Graphic  Description. — Defoe  excels  in  single  de- 
scriptive touches.  This  quality  includes  something  more  than 
that  of  minuteness,  already  discussed.  It  involves  a  concep- 
tion of  relations  as  well  as  of  details  ;  a  feeling  for  the  pict- 
uresque. Defoe  carefully  observes  the  cardinal  principles  of 
description  as  since  formulated  by  Bain  ;  that  is,  he  pre- 
sents, at  the  outset,  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  whole  scene  ; 
he  conveys  definite  ideas  of  size,  shape,  etc.,  by  comparison 


DEFOE  167 

with  well-known  objects,  and   he  often  uses  "  the  panoramic 
view  "  with  great  skill. 

''It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  he  observes  the  cardinal  rule 
of  description,  the  inaugural  presentation  of  a  comprehensive 
view.  He  fills  in  the  picture  by  degrees,  but  he  begins  by 
drawing  a  comprehensive  outline.  .  .  .  As  is  testified 
by  every  page  of  his  writings,  Defoe  excelled  in  the  graphic 
presentation  both  of  concrete  things  and  states  of  mind." — 
Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  You  ascend  the  great  staircase  at  the  upper  end  of  the  hall, 
which  is  very  large  ;  at  the  foot  of  the  staircase  you  have  a  Bac- 
chus as  large  as  life,  done  in  Peloponnesian  marble,  carrying  a 
young  Bacchus  on  his  arm,  the  young  one  eating  grapes  and  let- 
ting you  see  by  his  countenance  that  he  is  pleased  with  the  taste 
of  them." — From  London  to  Land's  End. 

"  He  was  a  comely,  handsome  fellow,  perfectly  well  made, 
with  straight  strong  limbs,  not  too  large  ;  tall  and  well-shaped, 
and,  as  I  reckon,  about  twenty-six  years  of  age.  He  had  a  very 
good  countenance,  not  a  fierce  and  surly  aspect,  but  seemed  to 
have  something  very  manly  in  his  face,  and  yet  he  had  all  the 
sweetness  and  softness  of  an  European  in  his  countenance  too, 
especially  when  he  smiled.  His  hair  was  long  and  black,  not 
curled  like  wool ;  his  forehead  very  high  and  large,  and  a  great 
vivacity  and  sparkling  sharpness  in  his  eyes." — Robinson  Crusoe. 

"On  Friday,  the  26th  of  November,  in  the  afternoon,  about 
four  of  the  clock,  a  country  fellow  came  running  to  me  in  a  great 
fright,  and  very  earnestly  entreated  me  to  go  and  see  a  pillar,  as 
he  called  it,  in  the  air,  in  a  field  hard  by.  I  went  with  the  fel- 
low :  and  when  I  came,  found  it  to  be  a  spout  marching  directly 
with  the  wind  :  and  I  can  think  of  nothing  I  can  compare  it  to 
better  than  the  trunk  of  an  elephant,  which  it  resembled,  only 
much  bigger.  It  was  extended  to  a  great  length,  and  swept  the 
ground  as  it  went,  leaving  a  mark  behind.  It  crossed  a  field  ; 
and  what  was  very  strange  (and  which  I  should  scarce  have  been 
induced  to  believe  had  I  not  myself  seen  it,  besides  several 
country-men  who  were  astonished  at  it)  meeting  with  an  oak 
that  stood  towards  the  middle  of  the  field,  snapped  the  body  of 
it  asunder." — The  Storm. 


SWIFT,   1667-1745 

Biographical  Outline.  —  Jonathan  Swift,  born  No- 
vember 30,  1667,  at  Dublin;  his  father,  who  died  before 
Swift's  birth,  was  steward  of  the  King's  Inns,  and  was  de- 
scended from  an  old  loyalist  family  ;  mother  distantly  related 
to  Dryden ;  when  one  year  old  Swift  was  kidnapped  by  his 
nurse,  out  of  affection,  and  was  carried  to  her  home  at  White 
Haven,  England,  where  his  mother  allowed  him  to  remain 
for  three  years  ;  by  his  third  year  he  could  read  any  chapter 
in  the  Bible ;  soon  after  the  child  was  brought  back  to  Dub- 
lin, his  mother  removed  to  Leicester  and  left  him  in  the  hands 
of  an  uncle,  who  sent  him,  in  his  sixth  year,  to  Kilkenny 
School,  then  called  "  the  Eton  of  Ireland  ;  "  here  Swift  finds 
Congreve  as  a  school-fellow ;  Swift  enters  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  April  24,  1682  ;  he  manifests  an  aversion  to  the 
scholastic  metaphysics,  neglects  the  regular  studies  of  the  cur- 
riculum for  history  and  poetry,  and,  though  living  regularly 
and  obeying  the  university  statutes,  is  refused  a  degree  at  the 
expiration  of  his  regular  four  years'  course  ;  he  seems  to  have 
obtained  a  fair  knowledge  of  the  classics ;  he  continues  in 
residence  at  the  university  for  some  time,  and  eventually  re- 
ceives his  degree  of  A.B.,  but  grows  somewhat  reckless  and 
dissipated  after  the  degree  is  first  refused ;  he  is  frequently 
censured  by  the  college  authorities  for  neglecting  to  attend 
chapel  services  and  for  haunting  the  town  ;  on  November  20, 
1688,  he  is  suspended  for  inciting  dissension  and  for  insulting 
the  dean  ;  while  at  Trinity  he  receives  much-needed  financial 
aid  from  his  brother,  Willoughby  Swift,  and  from  his  uncle, 
William  Swift ;  he  is  deeply  affected  by  his  poverty  and  his 
sense  of  dependence,  and  this  is  doubtless  one  of  the  causes 

1 68 


SWIFT  169 

of  his  life-long  bitterness  ;  on  the  accession  of  King  William 
in  1688,  Swift  flees  from  Ireland  with  other  Jacobites  and 
finds  refuge  in  his  mother's  home  at  Leicester,  where  she  was 
''rich  and  happy  on  twenty  pounds  a  year  ;  "  in  spite  of  her 
neglect  during  his  infancy,  he  was  deeply  devoted  to  his 
mother;  after  seeking  a  means  of  livelihood  for  some  time 
vainly,  he  is  received  into  the  family  of  Sir  William  Tem- 
ple at  Moor  Park,  near  Farnham,  in  Surrey,  whither  Temple 
had  retired  after  his  brilliant  diplomatic  career  ;  Temple  had 
been  a  friend  of  Swift's  grandfather,  and  was  distantly  related 
to  Swift  by  marriage;  after  acting  for  a  year  as  Temple's 
amanuensis,  during  which  time  Swift  is  said  to  have  been 
treated  somewhat  as  a  menial,  he  returns  to  Ireland  for  a 
short  time,  on  the  advice  of  a  physician,  "who  weakly  im- 
agined that  his  native  air  might  be  of  some  use  to  recover  his 
health  ;  "  he  bears  a  letter  from  Temple  to  the  Secretary  of 
State  for  Ireland,  in  Dublin,  recommending  Swift  for  a  clerk- 
ship or  a  fellowship  in  Trinity  College ;  he  soon  returns  to 
Moor  Park,  where  Temple  discovers  his  real  ability  and  com- 
mends him  to  King  William;  Swift  visits  Oxford  in  1692, 
and  receives  A.M.  ad  eundem ;  in  1693  he  is  employed  by 
Temple  to  explain  to  William's  ministers  Temple's  views  on 
the  Triennial  Bill ;  about  1693  he  begins  his  earlier  poems, 
which  are  marked  by  great  satirical  vigor ;  he  predicts  his 
future  in  the  couplet : 

"  My  hate,  whose  lash  just  Heaven  has  long  decreed 
Shall  on  a  day  make  sin  and  folly  bleed ;  " 

in  May,  1694,  Swift  declines  an  offer  of  ^120  a  year  to  act 
as  a  clerk  in  the  office  of  the  Master  of  the  Rolls  in  Ireland, 
and  quarrels  with  Temple ;  after  swallowing  his  pride  suffi- 
ciently to  ask  from  Temple  a  needful  letter  of  recommenda- 
tion, he  is  ordained  a  deacon,  October  28,  1694,  and  a  priest, 
January  15,  1695  ;  he  at  once  receives  the  small  prebend  of 
Kilroot,  worth  ^100  a  year,  but  he  soon  tires  of  the  obscure 


1 70  SWIFT 

life,  returns  to  Moor  Park  in  May,  1696,  and  resigns  his  pre- 
bend to  a  friend  in  March,  1698  ;  before  leaving  Kilroot 
Swift  declares  love  passionately  to  one  Miss  Waring  ("  Va- 
rina  "),  an  Irish  lady,  sister  of  an  old  college  chum,  but  his 
suit  is  not  encouraged  ;  he  remains  at  Moor  Park,  acting  as 
Temple's  clerk,  till  Temple's  death  in  1699;  he  becomes  a 
great  walker,  sometimes  doing  thirty-eight  miles  in  a  day  and 
lodging  at  way -side  inns,  where,  according  to  Orrery,  Swift 
imbibed  much  of  his  coarseness  of  language  from  the  discourse 
of  the  wagoners ;  while  at  Moor  Park  he  reads  diligently  in 
the  Latin  classics,  history,  and  philosophy  ;  he  also  acts  as 
tutor  to  Esther  Johnson,  a  dependent  of  Temple's,  unjustly 
suspected  at  the  time  of  being  Temple's  natural  daughter  ; 
on  Temple's  death  he  leaves  to  Swift  ^100,  the  privilege  of 
editing  Temple's  posthumous  works  (worth  perhaps  ^£200), 
and  a  recommendation  of  preferment  to  King  William  ;  the 
recommendation  proves  of  little  value  ;  Swift  began  his  liter- 
ary career  by  writing  certain  "  Pindaric  Odes,"  the  last  dated 
1691,  one  of  which  caused  Dryden  to  say  to  him,  "  You  will 
never  be  a  poet ;  "  Swift  also  writes  poetical  epistles  to  Con- 
greve  and  Temple ;  in  1696  he  writes  "  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  " 
and  in  1697  "The  Battle  of  the  Books,"  but  both  remain 
unpublished  till  1704  ;  in  1708,  to  prove  that  in  his  "  Tale 
of  a  Tub"  he  had  not  intended  to  express  sympathy  with 
the  current  infidelity,  he  publishes  "  An  Argument  in  Favor 
of  Abolishing  Christianity  in  England,"  intensely  satirical; 
in  a  similar  strain  was  his  "  Mr.  Collins's  Discourse  of  Free- 
thinking,"  published  in  1713;  in  1698,  failing  to  secure 
preferment  from  King  William  (perhaps  because  the  courtier 
to  whom  Swift  entrusted  his  petition  failed  to  deliver  it),  he 
becomes  chaplain  and  secretary  to  the  Earl  of  Berkeley,  then 
just  made  one  of  the  Lords  Justices  of  Ireland  ;  on  reaching 
Dublin  the  earl  dismisses  Swift  in  favor  of  another  man  ;  he 
applies  for  the  vacant  deanery  of  Derry,  but  is  refused  by  the 
secretary  except  on  the  presentation  of  a  bribe 


SWIFT  i;i 

the  amount  that  had  been  offered  by  another  candidate ; 
Swift  is  either  unable  or  unwilling  to  pay  the  bribe  ;  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1700,  he  receives  the  living  of  Laracor,  a  village  near 
Trim,  twenty  miles  from  Dublin  ;  this,  with  two  other  small 
livings  and  a  prebend  in  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Patrick,  give 
him  an  income  of  about  ^230  a  year  ;  at  this  time  "  Varina  ' ' 
(Miss  Waring),  whom  Swift  had  frequently  importuned  to 
marry  him,  expresses  a  wish  to  have  the  marriage  take  place  ; 
he  refuses  in  a  letter  remarkable  for  its  insulting  brutality,  in 
which  he  offers  to  marry  the  lady  on  conditions  that  her  self- 
respect  compel  her  to  refuse;  on  Temple's  death  in  1699, 
leaving  Esther  Johnson  (then  become  an  attractive  girl  of 
twenty)  homeless  and  with  an  inheritance  of  an  Irish  farm, 
Swift  suggests  to  her  that,  with  her  friend  Mrs.  Dingley,  she 
settle  in  Ireland,  where  she  could  live  more  cheaply;  the 
ladies  comply  with  the  suggestion  and  settle  in  Dublin,  in 
lodgings  near  those  of  Swift,  sometimes  occupying  his  apart- 
ments during  his  absence ;  twice  they  accompany  him  on 
visits  to  London ;  their  relationship  to  him  gives  rise  to  nu- 
merous scandals,  but  there  is  good  evidence  that  he  never 
saw  Miss  Johnson  except  in  the  presence  of  a  third  person  ; 
Swift's  duties  at  Laracor  were  light,  consisting  of  the  reading 
of  prayers  twice  a  week  to  an  audience  averaging  not  over 
fifteen  persons  ;  he  becomes  attached  to  Laracor,  and  greatly 
improves  the  living  ;  he  is  on  friendly  social  terms  with  the 
successive  Lord-Lieutenants  Berkeley,  Ormond,  and  Pem- 
broke, conducting  a  long  correspondence  with  Lady  Berkeley 
and  acting  as  chaplain  to  Ormond  and  Pembroke ;  between 
1700  and  1710  he  seems  to  have  passed  at  least  four  years  in 
London,  sometimes  acting  as  agent  for  the  Church  of  Ireland 
and  meeting  many  great  people  through  his  acquaintance 
with  the  Irish  viceroys  and  with  Congreve  ;  in  1705  he  be- 
comes intimate  with  Addison,  who  greatly  admires  and  pub- 
licly praises  him;  Swift  manifests  a  strange  indifference  to 
literary  fame  ;  while  in  London,  early  in  1708,  he  writes  the 


172  SWIFT 

famous  Bickerstaff  papers,  ridiculing  one  Partridge,  who  had 
set  up  as  an  astrologer,  and  thus  suggesting  to  Steele,  who  was 
just  starting  the  Tatler,  his  pseudonym  ;  though  intimate 
with  the  great  wits  and  great  statesmen  of  the  day,  Swift  gets 
"  nothing  but  the  good  words  and  good  wishes  of  a  decayed 
ministry  ;  "  in  1701  he  publishes  his  first  political  pamphlet, 
being  a  defence  of  Somers  and  other  Whig  ministers,  recently 
impeached,  under  the  title  A  Discourse  on  the  Dissensions 
in  Athens  and  Rome ;  the  pamphlet  becomes  very  popular, 
and  secures  for  Swift  the  friendship  of  Halifax,  Somers,  Sun- 
derland,  and  the  other  leading  Whigs ;  in  November,  1707, 
he  goes  to  London  and  attempts  to  secure  for  the  Irish 
Church  a  restoration  of  the  "  first  fruits  and  tenths,"  taken 
from  the  whole  Church  by  Henry  VIII.,  and  already  returned 
to  the  English  Church  by  Queen  Anne ;  he  remains  in  Lon- 
don till  March,  1709  ;  during  1708  Somers  tries  in  vain  to 
secure  for  Swift  the  vacant  bishopric  of  Waterford ;  in  Oc- 
tober, 1708,  Somers  becomes  President  of  the  Council,  and 
Wharton,  a  licentious  infidel,  is  made  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ire- 
land ;  about  this  time  Swift  shows  his  attachment  to  the 
Church  by  publishing  his  pamphlets,  A  Project  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Religion  and  The  Sentiments  of  a  Church  of 
England  Man  ;  in  December,  1708,  he  publishes  a  pamphlet 
defending  the  Test  Act ;  all  these  pamphlets  displeased  the 
Whigs,  then  in  power,  who  were  inclined  to  favor  the  dissent- 
ers ;  Swift  is  at  last  promised  the  "first  fruits"  that  he 
sought  for  the  Irish  Church,  but  the  promise  is  not  fulfilled  ; 
in  the  spring  of  1709,  after  visiting  his  mother  at  Leicester, 
he  retires  to  Laracor,  sick  in  mind  and  body  ;  he  remains  for 
eighteen  months  in  seclusion  at  Laracor,  nourishing  his  indig- 
nation against  the  Whigs,  and  especially  against  Wharton  ;  on 
the  overthrow  of  the  Whigs  in  September,  1709,  he  starts 
again  for  London  to  urge  his  "  first  fruits  "  appeal ;  he  be- 
gins his  famous  "Journal  to  Stella"  (letters  written  to  Esther 
Johnson  and  Mrs.  Dingley)  in  September,  1710,  and  con- 


SWIFT  1/3 

tinues  it  till  April,  1713;  it  was  evidently  written  with  no 
thought  of  publication  ;  he  is  received  in  London  by  the 
defeated  Whig  leaders  with  marked  attentions,  but  he  responds 
coldly;  on  October  10,  1710,  he  is  introduced  to  Harley, 
one  of  the  new  Tory  leaders,  and  is  cordially  received  ;  with- 
in a  week  Harley  promises  to  get  the  "  first  fruits  "  business 
settled  at  once,  and  all  the  Tory  leaders  express  delight  at 
securing  Swift's  support ;  the  "  first  fruits"  are  granted  No- 
vember 14,  1710;  Swift  becomes  intimate  with  Harley  and 
St.  John,  and  is  consulted  on  the  most  important  official  af- 
fairs ;  he  indignantly  rejects  an  offer  of  money-payment  for 
his  services ;  from  November  2,  1710,  to  June  14,  1711,  he 
writes  weekly  articles  for  St.  John's  Tory  paper,  the  Exam- 
iner ;  these  papers  contain  some  of  his  fiercest  satire,  and 
their  influence  is  tremendous  ;  during  the  election  of  1711  he 
wages  a  fierce  pamphlet  war  with  the  Whig  pamphleteers  ;  in 
November,  1711,  he  publishes  The  Conduct  of  the  Allies,  of 
which  n,ooo  copies  are  sold  within  two  months  ;  the  Tories 
are  victorious  in  December,  1711,  and  Swift  reaches  the 
height  of  his  political  power,  but  his  health  is  seriously  af- 
fected by  his  old  complaint  of  dizziness  ;  he  secures  many 
appointments  for  friends  and  other  applicants,  but  refuses  to 
ask  for  preferment  for  himself;  at  last  he  declares  that  he 
will  write  nothing  more  till  something  is  done  for  him,  and 
on  April  23,  1713,  he  is  appointed  dean  of  St.  Patrick's 
Cathedral  at  Dublin  ;  he  leaves  London  for  Dublin  in  June, 
1713,  is  ordained,  and  remains  at  his  post  till  October,  when, 
on  the  appeal  of  his  Tory  friends,  he  returns  to  London  ;  he 
endeavors  to  save  the  Tory  cause  by  reconciling  the  growing 
differences  between  the  leaders  Harley  and  St.  John  ;  late  in 
1713  he  publishes  a  scathing  pamphlet,  attacking  Bishop  Bur- 
net,  and  also  his  Public  Spirit  of  the  Whigs  ;  in  the  latter  he 
attacks  Steele,  who  had  entered  Parliament  and  had  opposed 
Swift's  party  in  a  pamphlet  called  the  Crisis;  meanwhile 
Swift  had  quarrelled  with  Addison  because,  after  Steele  had 


1/4  SWIFT 

lost  his  place  as  Gazetteer  and  after  Swift  had  obtained  a 
promise  of  reinstatement  on  condition  of  an  apology  by  Steele 
to  Harley  for  certain  things  in  the  Crisis,  Addison  advised 
Steele  not  to  apologize ;  good  feeling  was  afterward  restored 
between  Swift  and  Addison,  but  Swift  never  became  recon- 
ciled to  Steele;  in  1714  Steele  was  expelled  from  the  House 
for  his  authorship  of  the  Crisis  ;  in  May,  1714,  having  failed 
to  reconcile  Harley  and  St.  John,  Swift  retires  to  a  parsonage 
at  Upper  Letcombe,  in  Berkshire ;  he  refuses  all  appeals  to 
return  to  London,  but  writes,  without  publishing,  his  pam- 
phlet entitled  Free  Thoughts  upon  the  Present  State  of  Af- 
fairs;  although  Oxford  had  not  treated  Swift  well,  Swift 
thrice  writes  to  him,  urging  a  course  that  would  have  saved 
Oxford  ;  on  the  death  of  Queen  Anne  and  the  expulsion  of 
Oxford,  in  August,  1714,  Swift  returns  to  Dublin  and  shuts 
himself  up  with  his  chagrin  and  political  despair  ;  in  a  letter 
to  Oxford  he  offers  to  join  him  in  the  Tower ;  he  continues 
to  affect  brutality,  especially  toward  women,  issuing  regular 
edicts,  commanding  all  ladies  who  seek  his  acquaintance  to 
make  the  first  advances  ;  before  the  time  of  the  ' '  Journal  to 
Stella"  she  had  refused  as  a  suitor  one  Tisdall,  a  Dublin 
clergyman,  whom  Swift  did  not  regard  with  favor ;  certain 
passages  in  Swift's  letters  indicate  that  he  was  somewhat  jeal- 
ous of  Tisdall 's  attentions  to  "Stella;  "  in  1708  he  meets, 
in  London,  Mrs.  Van  Homrigh,  a  well-to-do  widow,  and  her 
daughter  Hester,  then  aged  seventeen;  in  1710  he  takes 
lodgings  with  the  Van  Homrighs  and  becomes  a  member  of 
the  family  ;  about  the  time  of  obtaining  his  deanery  he  be- 
gins to  call  Hester  Van  Homrigh  "  Vanessa  "  and  to  make  a 
confidante  of  her;  in  his  autobiographical  poem  "  Cadenus 
(Decanus,  or  the  Dean)  and  Vanessa  "  he  asserts  that  he  re- 
garded her  simply  with  fatherly  affection,  but  she  soon  de- 
clared to  him  that  he  had  won  her  heart ;  he  replied  that  his 
age,  etc.,  put  love  out  of  the  question,  but  offered  her  unlim- 
ited friendship ;  on  the  death  of  Miss  Van  Homrigh's  mother, 


SWIFT  175 

soon  after  thp  final  retirement  of  Swift  to  Ireland,  the  young 
lady  also  retires  to  Ireland,  with  her  sister,  and  eventually 
settles  at  Celbridge,  near  Dublin  ;  Swift  shuns  the  company  of 
"  Vanessa,"  who  adores  him  passionately,  and  he  begs  her  to 
leave  him  forever ;  it  is  believed  by  some  of  his  biographers 
that  his  dilemma  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  secretly 
married  to  "  Stella"  in  1716,  but  this  remains  neither  proved 
nor  disproved — at  least,  he  was  most  anxious  to  prevent  a 
meeting  between  "  his  two  slaves  ;  "  in  1723  "  Vanessa  "  is 
said  to  have  written  to  "  Stella,"  asking  if  she  were  Swift's 
wife,  and  "  Stella"  is  said  to  have  replied  in  the  affirmative 
and  to  have  shown  "Vanessa's"  letter  to  Swift;  he  rides 
to  Celbridge,  confronts  "Vanessa"  with  the  letter,  and  she 
dies  soon  afterward,  first  revoking  her  will,  in  which  she  had 
made  him  sole  legatee,  and  after  requesting  her  executors  to 
publish  both  Swift's  letters  and  his  autobiographical  poem 
"  Cadenus  and  Vanessa  ;  "  he  visits  England  in  the  summer 
of  1726,  but  is  made  wrretched  by  the  reports  of  "  Stella's  " 
declining  health  ;  he  spends  the  winter  in  Dublin,  and  re- 
turns to  London  during  the  summer  of  1727  ;  "  Stella  "  dies 
at  Dublin  January  28,  1728  ;  the  story,  widely  circulated, 
that  on  her  death-bed  she  refused  Swift's  offer  to  make  their 
marriage  public,  is  not  sustained,  neither  is  the  equally  prev- 
alent story  that  he  discovered  her  to  be  his  natural  sister  ; 
Swift's  apologists  explain  his  refusal  to  marry  on  the  ground  of 
his  natural  coldness  of  temper,  his  extreme  economy,  practised 
with  a  view  to  becoming  independent,  his  chronic  malady 
of  vertigo,  and  his  frequent  forebodings  of  insanity  ;  after 
withdrawing  from  politics  for  ten  years  he  publishes,  in  1724, 
his  "  Drapier's  Letters,"  combating  a  scheme  of  Walpole's  for 
giving  to  one  Wood  a  monopoly  of  copper  coinage  in  Ire- 
land ;  the  effect  of  the  "  Letters  "  is  tremendous,  and  the  Privy 
Council  modifies  the  terms  of  the  monopoly  ;  ^300  are  offered 
as  a  reward  for  the  arrest  of  the  author,  and  the  printer  is 
prosecuted  ;  the  monopoly  soon  fails  entirely,  and  Swift  be- 


1/6  SWIFT 

comes  a  popular  idol;  on  his  return  from  England,  in  1726, 
he  is  greeted  with  public  honors  such  as  are  generally  re- 
served for  princes;  about  1727  he  makes  a  long  visit  to  Pope, 
meets  Bolingbroke  and  Wai  pole,  and  receives  some  assurances 
of  court  favor,  which  are  not  fulfilled  ;  he  now  speaks  of  re- 
maining in  Dublin  as  "  dying  like  a  poisoned  rat  in  a  hole  ;  " 
he  warmly  defends  the  Church,  and  writes  his  fiercest  satire, 
"  The  Legion  Club,"  when  Parliament  proposes  to  invade 
Church  privileges;  while  writing  this  he  is  seized  with  a  fit, 
and  is  soon  incapable  of  extended  mental  effort ;  in  1729  he 
writes  A  Modest  Proposal  for  Preventing  the  Children  of  Poor 
People  in  Ireland  from  Becoming  a  Burden  to  their  Parents 
or  the  Country ;  as  early  as  1713-14  he  had  formed,  with 
Pope,  Gay,  and  Arbuthnot,  the  Scriblerus  Club,  whose  ob- 
ject was  the  production  of  a  joint  stock  satire  ;  this  seems  to 
have  been  the  origin  of  the  idea  of  "Gulliver's  Travels;  " 
Swift  wrote  a  part  of  the  "Travels"  as  early  as  1722,  com- 
pleted it  in  1726,  and  published  it  anonymously  in  1727  ; 
its  success  was  overwhelming  ;  after  its  publication  he  returns 
to  his  "wretched  dirty  dog-hole  of  a  prison,"  becomes  the 
centre  of  a  little  intellectual  circle,  practises  the  most  gener- 
ous charity,  grows  daily  more  sour  and  apparently  avaricious, 
befriends  Sheridan,  and,  by  1741,  becomes  so  violently  insane 
as  to  require  restraint ;  during  his  later  years  he  amused  him- 
self with  writing  acrostics,  riddles,  etc.  ;  his  last  writings  worth 
noting  are  "  Polite  Conversation,"  "  Directions  to  Servants  " 
(the  latter  published  after  Swift  became  imbecile),  and  three 
poems:  "Verses  on  Dr.  Swift's  Death,"  "A  Rhapsody  on 
Poetry,"  and  "Verses  to  a  Lady;"  in  1735  he  declared 
that  he  never  had  received  a  farthing  for  anything  he  wrote 
except  that,  through  Pope's  prudent  management,  he  got 
^200  for  "Gulliver;"  he  gave  the  profits  of  his  other 
writings  to  the  publishers;  he  died  at  Dublin,  October  19, 
1745,  and  left  ^12,000  to  found  St.  Patrick's  Hospital, 
which  was  opened  in  1757  with  fifty  beds. 


SWIFT 


BIBLIOGRAPHY    ON     SWIFT'S     STYLE. 

Gosse,  E. ,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1868,  Mac- 
millan,  140-167. 

Jeffrey,  J.,  "  Jonathan  Swift. "  London,  1853,  Longmans,  Green  &  Co., 
v.,  index. 

Craik,  H.,  "Life  of  Jonathafc  Swift."  London,  1882,  Macmillan,  v., 
index. 

Philips,  M.  G.,  "  Manual  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1893, 
Harper,  I  :  533~563- 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  "The  English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury." London,  1886,  Smith,  Elder  &  Co. ,  119-155. 

Johnson,  S.,  "  The  Lives  of  the  Poets  (Works)."  New  York,  1846, 
Harper,  I  :  211-223;  3:  1-25. 

Minto,  W.,  "  English  Prose  Literature. "     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 

36I-377- 
Taine,    H.   A.,    "History   of  English    Literature."     New  York,    1875, 

Holt,  2 :   352-392,  and  v.  index. 
Morley,  H.  (Stephen),  "English  Men  of  Letters  (Swift)."     New  York, 

1879,  Harper. 
Hazlitt,  W.,  "Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,  1884,  G.  Bell 

&  Sons,  145-152. 
Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     London,  1892,  Nelson, 

282-288. 
Hannay,  J.,  "Satire  and  Satirists."     New  York,  1855,   Redfield,  130- 

I5i- 

Masson,  D.,  "British  Novelists."     Boston,  1892,  W.  Small,  87-106. 
Forster,  T.,  "  Life  of  Jonathan  Swift. "     New  York,  1876,  Harper. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,    1883, 

Appleton,  162-170. 

Masson,  D.,  "  Three  Devils, "  etc.      London,  1874,  Macmillan,  235-301. 
Hunt,   T.    W.,    "Representative    English    Prose."     New   York,    1887, 

Armstrong,  265-287. 

Hallam,  H.,  "Literature  of  Europe."     New  York,  1847,  Harper,  419. 
Craik,   G.    L.,  "History    of  English    Literature."      New   York,    1869, 

Scribner,  208-239. 
De  Quincey,    T.,    "Works."      Edinburgh,    1890,    C.  &  A.  Black,    II. 

12-19. 

Eagle,  J.,  "Essays."     Edinburgh,  1857,  Blackwood,  213-264. 
Coan,  T.   M.,  "  Topics  of  the  Times. "     New  York,   1883,  Putnam,   2: 

12 


178  SWIFT 

Dilke.    C.    W.,    "Papers   of   a   Critic."     London,    1875,    Murray,    I: 

361-382. 
Bascom,  J.,    "The    Philosophy   of   English    Literature."     New    York, 

1877,  Putnam,  178. 
Knight,   Charles,    "Gallery  of  Portraits."     London,  1835,   C.    Knight, 

5=  45-52- 
Wilson,  J.,  "  Studies  of  Modern  Mind  and  Character."     London,  1881, 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  69-116. 
Ward,  T.  H.  (Nichol),  "  English  Poets."     New  York,  1881,  Macmillan, 

3=  34-39- 
Dawson,   G.,    "Biographical   Lectures.",    London,    1887,    Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  141-159. 

Russell,  W.  C.,  "Book  of  Authors."     London,  n.  d.,  Warne,  v.,  index. 
Timbs,   J.,    "Wits   and  Humourists."     London,  1872,  R.   Bentley,   2: 

1-121. 

L'Estrange,   A.   G.,    "History  of  English  Humour."     London,    1878, 

Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :   44-62. 
Howitt,  William,  "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Authors. "     New  York, 

1863,  Routledge,  116-140. 
Wilde,  Lady,  "  Notes  on  Men,"  etc.     London,  1891,  Ward  &  Downey, 

85-112. 
Hay,    Jos.,    "Jonathan   Swift — the    Mystery  of  his   Life   and   Love." 

London,  1891,  Chapman  &  Hall. 
The  Nation,  22  :  248-250  and  265-267  (Lowell). 
British  Quarterly  Review,  20:  528-560  (Masson). 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  17:  436-456  (C.  C.  Clark). 
The  Athenaum,  1886  (i):  96-97  (S.  L.  Poole). 
Dublin  University  Magazine,   33:  374-381    (W.  R.  Wilde);    15:  634- 

661. 

I'nitarian  Revino,  II:   233-247  (N.  P.  Gilman). 
Edinburgh  Re^'iew,  28:    1-58  (Jeffrey). 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  15  :   141-147  (H.  T.  Tuckerman). 
North  American  Review,  106:   68-128  (A.  S.  Hill). 
Comhill  Magazine,  33  :    172-183. 
Eclectic  Afagazine,  28 :    83-91. 
North  British  Review,  1 1 :   337-368. 


SWIFT  179 


PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Caustic  Satire  —  Impatience  of  Absurdity  — 
Ferocious  Sarcasm. — Sarcasm  is  Swift's  favorite  weapon, 
and  in  its  use  he  is  without  a  peer.  T.  W.  Hunt  calls  him  "  the 
lord  of  irony;  "  Minto  declares  that  "nobody  can  pretend 
to  dispute  his  title  of  the  prince  of  English  satirists ;  his 
mastery  of  language  for  the  purposes  of  ridicule  is  universally 
allowed  to  be  unsurpassed.  His  similitudes  never  elevate  a 
subject  except  in  irony.  He  exempts  from  his  ridicule  no 
profession,  no  foible,  hardly  any  institution,  hardly  any 
character."  Dr.  Johnson  calls  his  "  Argument  against  Abol- 
ishing Christianity  "  "a.  very  happy  and  judicious  irony." 
This  is  too  mild  a  term  to  apply  to  most  of  Swift's 
works,  but  it  must  be  said,  in  fairness,  that  his  biting  satire  is 
generally  without  malice.  He  scourges  with  a  whip  of  scor- 
pions, but  he  generally  scourges  with  a  good  end  in  view.  He 
sometimes  hated  men,  but  he  hated  dishonesty  and  meanness 
and  injustice  more. 

"  He  is  the  fiercest  and,  take  him  all  in  all,  the  greatest  of 
all  the  satirists.  .  .  .  He  is  the  greatest  of  the  English 
satirists,  I  think,  in  all  ways.  .  .  .  His  satire  goes  very 
deep  ;  it  is  not  only  a  bitter  satire  against  individuals,  it  is 
philosophical  satire,  which  goes  to  the  root  of  things." — J. 
Hannay. 

"  The  ludicrous  in  Swift  arises  out  of  his  keen  sense  of 
impropriety,  his  soreness  and  impatience  of  the  least  ab- 
surdity. .  .  .  He  sets  a  mark  of  reprobation  on  that 
which  offends  good  sense  and  good  manners,  which  cannot 
be  mistaken  and  which  holds  it  up  to  our  ridicule  and  con- 
tempt ever  after." — Hazlitt. 

"'The  Battle  of  the  Books'  strikes  an  entirely  different 
chord.  Its  object  is  satire,  not  criticism.  .  .  .  Like 


180  SWIFT 

all  the  satire  that  Swift  ever  wrote,  it  goes  directly  to  the 
point  by  its  personal  reference.  .  .  .  No  weapon  of 
sarcasm  is  neglected  [in  the  '  Tale  of  a  Tub  ']  and,  after  the 
ground  has  been  mapped  out  and  the  general  positions  assigned, 
each  new  illustration,  each  subordinate  metaphor,  seems  to 
give  some  new  point  to  the  ridicule.  .  .  .  Satire  such  as 
this  reaches  far  beyond  the  accidents  of  ecclesiastical  con- 
troversies, beyond  the  realm  even  of  literary  cliques  ;  it  pur- 
sues human  nature,  and  routs  it  put  from  all  its  subterfuges 
and  disguises.  ...  In  '  Brobdingnag  '  the  satire  never 
allows  itself  to  be  forgotten  long.  .  .  .  His  sarcasm  was 
too  fierce  to  allow  him  to  become  a  theoretical  reformer. 
What  strikes  us  most  in  the  political  tracts  is  the  deliberate 
incisiveness  of  their  irony,  the  despairing  bitterness  that  gives 
them  finish  and  completeness." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  He  moves  laughter  but  never  joins  it.  He  appears  in 
his  works  as  he  appears  in  society.  All  the  company  are  con- 
vulsed with  merriment,  while  the  Dean,  the  author  of  all  the 
mirth,  preserves  an  invincible  gravity  and  even  sourness  of 
aspect,  and  gives  utterance  to  the  most  eccentric  and  ludicrous 
fancies  with  the  air  of  a  man  reading  the  Commination  Ser- 
vice.' ' — Macaulay. 

"  Each  of  these  treatises  ['  The  Battle  of  the  Books  '  and 
the  '  Mechanical  Operation  of  the  Spirit ']  shows  a  great  free- 
dom from  prejudice,  a  boundless  impatience  of  humbug  and 
pretension,  and  a  savage  touch  which  is  all  the  more  brutal 
because  of  the  delicacy,  keenness,  and  power  of  sympathy  of 
which  the  author  shows  himself  inherently  capable  upon  every 
page.  .  .  .  Dean  Swift  could  write  finely  on  a  broom- 
stick, and  not  finely  merely,  but  with  the  most  caustic  and 
fatal  pungency." — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  Swift,  in  his  fictions,  as  in  the  rest  of  his  writings,  is  the 
British  satirist  of  his  age.  ...  In  all  that  he  said  and 
did  there  was  a  vein  of  ferocious  irony.  ...  In  the 
'  Battle  of  the  Books  '  we  have  a  satire  directed  partly  against 


SWIFT  l8l 

individuals  and  partly  against  a  prevailing  tone  of  opinion  and 
criticism.  In  the  '  Tale  of  a  Tub '  he  appears  as  a  satirist  of 
the  existing  Christian  churches.  .  .  .  The  author  of  these 
books  could  not  but  be  acknowledged  as  the  first  prose  satirist 
of  the  age." — David  Masson. 

"He  was,  without  exception,  the  greatest  and  most  effi- 
cient libeller  that  ever  exercised  the  trade,  and  possessed 
in  an  eminent  degree  all  the  qualifications  which  it  requires 
— a  clear  head,  a  cold  heart,  a  vindictive  temper,  no  ad- 
miration of  noble  qualities,  no  sympathy  with  suffering, 
not  much  conscience,  not  much  consistency,  a  ready  wit,  a 
sarcastic  humor,  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  baser  parts  of 
human  nature,  and  a  complete  familiarity  with  everything 
that  is  low,  homely,  and  familiar  in  language.  These  were  his 
gifts,  and  he  soon  felt  for  what  ends  they  were  given.  Almost 
all  his  works  are  libels — generally  upon  individuals,  sometimes 
upon  sects  and  parties,  sometimes  upon  human  nature.  What- 
ever be  his  end,  however,  personal  abuse — direct,  vehement, 
unsparing  invective — is  his  means.  It  is  his  sword  and  his 
shield,  his  panoply  and  his  chariot  of  war.  In  all  his  writings, 
accordingly,  there  is  nothing  to  raise  or  exalt  our  notions 
of  human  nature,  but  everything  to  vilify  and  degrade." — 
Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  they  do  in  Heaven  we  are  ignorant  of;  what  they  do 
not,  we  are  told  expressly,  that  they  neither  marry  nor  are  given 
in  marriage." —  Thoughts  on  Various  Subjects. 

"  It  may  be  neither  safe  nor  prudent  to  argue  against  the  abol- 
ishing of  Christianity  at  a  juncture  when  all  parties  appear  so 
unanimously  determined  upon  the  point,  as  we  cannot  but  allow 
from  their  actions,  their  discourses,  and  their  writings." — The 
Abolishment  of  Christianity. 

"Physicians  ought  not  to  give  their  judgment  of  religion  for 
the  same  reason  that  butchers  are  not  admitted  to  be  jurors  upon 
life  and  death." — Thoughts  on  Various  Subjects. 


1 82  SWIFT 

"  I  have  been  sometimes  thinking,  if  a  man  had  the  art  of  the 
second  sight  for  seeing  lies,  as  they  have  in  Scotland  for  see- 
ing spirits,  how  admirably  he  might  entertain  himself  in  this 
town  by  observing  the  different  shapes,  sizes,  and  colours 
of  those  swarms  of  lies  which  buzz  about  the  heads  of  some 
people  like  flies  about  a  horse's  ears  in  summer." — The  Ex- 
aminer. 

11 1  have  been  assured  by  a  very  knowing  American  of  my  ac- 
quaintance in  London  that  a  young  healthy  child,  well  nursed, 
is,  at  a  year  old,  a  most  delicious,'  nourishing,  and  wholesome 
food,  whether  stewed,  roasted,  baked,  or  boiled  ;  and  I  make  no 
doubt  that  it  will  equally  serve  in  a  fricassee  or  a  ragout.  .  .  . 
I  grant  this  food  will  be  somewhat  dear  and  therefore  very  proper 
for  [Irish]  landlords,  who,  as  they  have  already  devoured  most 
of  the  parents,  seem  to  have  the  best  title  to  the  children." — A 
Modest  Proposal,  etc. 


2.  Directness— Sincerity— Terseness.— Like  Mil- 
ton, Swift  seldom,  if  ever,  wrote  merely  for  the  purpose  of 
making  literature.  He  was  intensely  in  earnest.  Most  of 
his  prose  is  aggressive,  and  he  attacks  boldly  and  directly ;  he 
makes  no  feints  and  no  pretences.  ' '  He  does  not  address 
men  in  general,"  says  Taine,  "  but  certain  men  ;  he  does  not 
care  to  teach  a  truth  but  to  make  an  impression." 

"  The  merits  of  his  prose  are  condensation,  pith,  always 
with  the  effect,  generally  the  reality,  of  sincere  purpose  and, 
with  few  exceptions,  simplicity  and  directness." — F.  Nichol. 

"In  these  poems  [written  for  the  Tatler\  Swift  is  splen- 
didly direct,  vivid,  and  vigorous;  his  lines  fall  like  well- 
directed  blows  of  the  flail.  .  .  .  He  is  a  writer  of  the 
first  order  because  he  moulded  language  to  be  the  vehicle  of  a 
sincerity  that  has  never  been  surpassed.  .  .  .  The  po- 
lemical and  humorous  parts  [of  '  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  ']  are 
direct  and  terse  beyond  anything  that  preceded  them  in  Eng- 
lish."— Edmund  Gossc. 


SWIFT  183 

"  He  separates  with  a  severe  and  caustic  air  truth  from  false- 
hood, folly  from  wisdom,  '  shows  vice  her  o\vn  image,  scorn 
her  own  feature;  '  and  it  is  the  force,  the  precision,  and  the 
honest  abruptness  with  which  the  separation  is  made  that  ex- 
cites our  surprise  and  our  admiration." — Hazlitt. 

"It  is  not  only  by  its  flashes  of  wit,  by  its  bursts  of  elo- 
quence, by  the  steady  and  relentless  heat  of  its  satire,  that  it 
[Swift's  style]  is  redeemed  :  but  still  more  by  the  marvellous 
strength  and  grasp  with  which  the  whole  of  human  nature  is 
seized,  bound  to  the  dissecting-table,  and  made  to  yield  to 
his  pitiless  scalpel  the  tale  of  its  subterfuges  and  pretences  and 
tricks.  Other  satires  have  their  special  application.  Who 
is  it  that  can  limit  the  range  of  the  satire  in  '  The  Tale  of  a 
Tub?'"— G.  L.  Craik. 

"  They  ['  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  '  and  «  Gulliver  ']  are  written 
with  great  plainness,  force,  and  intrepidity — advance  at  once  to 
the  matter  in  dispute — give  battle  to  the  strength  of  the  enemy, 
and  never  seek  any  kind  of  advantage  from  darkness  or  ob- 
scurity. .  .  .  There  is  a  force  and  terror  about  it  ['  The 
Legion  Club']  which  redeems  it  from  ridicule  and  makes  us 
shudder  at  the  sort  of  demoniacal  inspiration  with  which  the 
malison  is  vented.  .  .  .  On  the  subjects  to  which  he 
confines  himself  he  is  unquestionably  a  strong,  masculine,  and 
perspicuous  writer.  He  is  never  finical,  fantastic,  or  absurd — 
takes  advantage  of  no  equivocations  in  argument — and  puts  on 
no  tawdriness  for  ornaments.  .  .  .  Though  a  great  polemic, 
he  makes  no  use  of  general  principles,  nor  ever  enlarges  his 
views  to  a  wide  or  comprehensive  conclusion.  Everything  is 
particular  with  him  and,  for  the  most  part,  strictly  personal. 
To  make  amends,  however,  we  do  think  him  quite  without  a 
competitor  in  personalities.  With  a  quick  and  sagacious 
spirit  and  a  bold  and  popular  manner,  he  joins  an  exact 
knowledge  of  all  the  strong  and  the  weak  parts  of  every  cause 
he  has  to  manage." — -Jeffrey. 


1 84  SWIFT 

"  No  English  is  so  pointed  and  so  direct  as  Swift's.  Every 
sentence  is  a  keen  knife  that  cuts  straight  to  the  core ;  there 
is  no  hesitation  or  swerving;  there  is  never  a  word  wasted." 
— Stanley  Lane-Poole. 

"Swift  wrote  with  a  tact,  a  force,  and  a  clearness  that  al- 
most ensured  a  satisfactory  issue.  He  selected  the  best  weapon 
and  used  it  with  rare  judgment.  .  .  .  For  perspicuity, 
directness,  and  freedom  from  involution  or  bombast,  his  style 
is  a  model." — H.  T.  Tuckerman\ 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  For  my  own  part,  who  am  but  a  man  of  obscure  condition,  I 
do  solemnly  declare,  in  the  presence  of  Almighty  God,  that  I  will 
suffer  the  most  ignominious  and  torturing  death  rather  than  to 
submit  to  receive  this  accursed  coin,  or  any  other  that  shall  be 
liable  to  these  objections,  until  they  be  forced  upon  me  by  a  law 
of  my  own  country;  and  if  that  shall  ever  happen,  I  will  trans- 
port myself  into  some  foreign  land  and  eat  the  bread  of  poverty 
among  a  free  people." — The  Drapier's  Letters. 

"Let  them  [the  allies]  therefore  lay  aside  all  clumsy  pretence 
to  address  ;  tell  us  no  more  of  former  sieges,  battles,  and  glories  ? 
nor  make  love  to  us  in  prose,  and  extol  our  beauty,  our  fortune, 
and  their  own  passion  for  us  up  to  the  stars  ;  but  let  them  come 
roundly  to  the  business,  and  in  plain  terms  give  us  to  understand 
that  they  will  not  recognize  any  other  government  in  Great  Brit- 
ain but  Whiggarchy  only." — The  Conduct  of  the  Allies. 

"  I  have  never  known  this  great  town  without  one  or  more 
dunces  of  figure  who  had  credit  enough  to  give  rise  to  some  new 
word  and  propagate  it  in  most  conversation,  though  it  had  neither 
humor  nor  significance." — The  Examiner. 

"  If  a  rebellion  should  prove  so  successful  as  to  fix  the  Pre- 
tender on  the  throne  of  England,  I  would  venture  to  transgress 
that  statute  so  far  as  to  lose  every  drop  of  my  blood  to  hinder  him 
from  being  king  of  Ireland." — The  Drapier's  Letters. 

3.  Intensity. — If  qualities  of  style  are  to  be  measured  by 
the  results  accomplished  through  their  agency,  then  Swift  must 
be  considered  one  of  the  most  forcible  writers  that  ever  held  a 


SWIFT  185 

pen.  By  his  pamphlets  he  became  almost  the  political  dicta- 
tor of  his  day.  His  "  Drapier's  Letters"  revolutionized  the 
financial  policy  of  the  government.  His  "  Conduct  of  the 
Allies"  really  caused  the  cessation  of  the  Spanish  War.  Dr. 
Smith  calls  it  the  most  successful  pamphlet  ever  issued.  Eleven 
thousand  copies  were  sold  within  two  months.  Taine  de- 
clares that  his.  Examiner  "  in  one  year  transformed  the  opin- 
ion of  three  kingdoms. ' '  These  marvellous  results  must  be  at- 
tributed largely  to  Swift's  forcible  way  of  putting  things.  His 
arguments  and  his  invective  were  unanswerable,  and  his  lan- 
guage was  as  forcible  as  his  thought.  Swift  had  nothing  but 
contempt  for  the  false  refinements  and  meretricious  ornaments 
of  language  from  which  his  age  was  not  free.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  force  of  his  style  often  degenerated  into  coarseness, 
even  indecency. 

"  If  a  single  word  were  to  be  employed  in  describing  it 
['The  Battle  of  the  Books'],  applicable  alike  to  its  wit  and 
to  its  extravagance,  intensity  should  be  chosen." — -John 
Forster. 

"The  two  qualities  whose  union  marks  Swift's  genius  are 
intensity  and  lucidity.  .  .  .  The  anger  [in  '  A  Proposal 
for  the  Universal  Use  of  Irish  Manufactures ']  comes  out  in 
short  pithy,  telling  sentences,  which  are  abruptly  closed,  and 
leave  a  sense  of  power  in  reserve.  .  .  .  It  is  rigidly  char- 
acteristic in  its  simple  force,  wasting  no  word  by  redundancy, 
marring  the  effect  by  no  overwrought  effort." — G.  L.Craik. 

"  In  vigor  and  poignancy  of  satire,  in  grave  irony,  in  mas- 
culine force  and  intensity,  '  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  '  has  never 
been  surpassed." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  In  certain  fine  and  deep  qualities  Addison  and  Steele, 
and  perhaps  Farquhar,  excelled,  .  .  .  but  in  natural 
brawn  and  strength,  in  original  energy,  force,  and  imperious- 
ness  of  brain,  he  excelled  them  all."—  David  Masson. 

"  The  power  of  Swift's  prose  was  the  terror  of  his  own  and 
remains  the  wonder  of  after-times. " — F.  Nichol. 


1 86  SWIFT 

"  He  is  careful  to  make  his  words  fit  close  to  his  ideas,  and 
often  brings  out  his  meaning  sharply  by  contrasting  it  with 
what  he  does  not  mean.  .  .  .  His  action  is  emphatic  and 
copious,  and  the  intense  force  of  his  satire  is  unsurpassed." 
— Minto. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  know  your  Lordship  means  those  long-since  exploded  doc- 
trines of  obedience  and  submission  to  princes,  which  were  only 
calculated  to  make  a  free  and  happy  people  slaves  and  miserable. 
Who  but  asses  and  pack-horses  and  beasts  of  burden  can  enter- 
tain such  servile  notions  ?  " — A  Pretended  Letter,  etc. 

"  Cromwell  was  dead  ;  his  son  Richard,  a  weak  ignorant  wretch, 
who  gave  up  his  monarchy  much  in  the  same  manner  with  the 
two  usurping  kings  of  Brentford  [in  the  '  Rehearsal']." — The  Plea 
of  Merit. 

"  I  hope  your  husband  will  interpose  his  authority  to  limit  you 
in  the  trade  of  visiting  ;  half  a  dozen  fools  are,  in  all  conscience, 
as  many  as  you  should  require  ;  and  it  will  be  sufficient  for  you 
to  see  them  twice  a  year  ;  for  I  think  the  fashion  does  not  exact 
that  visits  should  be  paid  to  friends." — Letter  to  a  Young  Lady 
on  her  Marriage. 

"  It  will  no  doubt  be  a  mighty  comfort  to  our  grandchildren, 
when  they  see  a  few  rags  hung  up  in  Westminster  Hall,  which 
cost  a  hundred  millions,  whereof  they  are  paying  the  arrears,  to 
boast  as  beggars  do  that  their  grandfathers  were  rich  and  great." 
—  The  Conduct  of  the  Allies. 

4.  Plainness  —  Simplicity  —  Homeliness  —  Bald- 
ness.— This  means  something  more  than  mere  simplicity  of 
style.  Swift  laid  down  and  followed  the  principle  that  "  the 
divine  should  have  nothing  to  say  to  the  wisest  of  men  that 
the  most  uneducated  could  not  understand."  "  In  respect  to 
plainness,"  says  Hunt,  "  he  has  no  superior  in  English  prose. 
He  called  things  by  their  right  names.  He  had  no  faith  in 
Talleyrand's  theory  '  that  language  is  the  art  of  concealing 


SWIFT  187 

thought. '  His  style  has  a  downright  practical  bluntness  that 
marked  it  as  superior,  and  makes  it  still  representative." 
Craik  calls  Swift's  style  "so  idiomatic,  so  English,  so  true 
and  appropriate  in  all  its  varieties."  "Every  sentence," 
says  Shaw,  "  is  homely  and  rugged  and  strong."  He  seems 
to  have  hated  foreign  words  as  he  hated  men.  Sometimes 
Swift  carries  this  quality  of  plainness  to  such  an  extreme  that, 
as  Taine  declares,  "  he  has  the  style  of  a  surgeon  and  a  judge 
— cold,  grave,  solid,  unadorned.  He  imports  into  literature 
the  positive  spirit  of  men  of  business,  degrading  everything  to 
the  level  of  vulgar  events." 

"  Dean  Swift  may  be  placed  at  the  head  of  those  who  have 
employed  a  plain  style.  Few  writers  have  discovered  more 
capacity.  He  treats  every  subject  which  he  handles,  whether 
serious  or  ludicrous,  in  a  masterly  manner.  He  knew,  almost 
beyond  any  man,  the  purity,  the  extent,  the  precision  of  the 
English  language." — Blair. 

"  He  always  understands  himself,  and  his  readers  always 
understand  him.  The  peruser  of  Swift  wants  little  previous 
knowledge,  and  it  is  sufficient  that  he  is  acquainted  with  com- 
mon words  and  common  things.  He  is  neither  required  to 
mount  elevations  nor  to  explore  profundities.  His  passage  is 
always  on  a  level  or  on  solid  ground,  without  asperities,  with- 
out obstruction.  ...  He  studied  purity,  .  .  .  and 
whoever  depends  upon  his  authority  may  generally  conclude 
himself  safe.  His  sentences  are  never  too  much  dilated  or 
contracted,  and  it  would  not  be  easy  to  find  any  embarrass- 
ment in  the  complication  of  his  clauses,  any  inconsequence  in 
his  connections  or  abruptness  in  his  transitions.  .  .  .  They 
[his  works]  are  written  with  great  plainness,  force,  and  in- 
trepidity— advance  at  once  to  the  matter  in  dispute — give 
battle  to  the  strength  of  the  enemy,  and  never  seek  any  kind 
of  advantage  from  darkness  or  obscurity.  .  .  .  Its  ['  The 
Tale  of  a  Tub's  ']  great  merit  seems  to  consist  in  the  author's 
familiarity  with  all  sorts  of  common  and  idiomatic  expres- 


1 88  SWIFT 

sions.  ...  To  deliver  absurd  notions  or  incredible  tales 
in  the  most  authentic,  honest,  and  direct  terms,  .  .  .  and 
to  luxuriate  in  all  the  variations  of  that  grave,  plain,  and  per- 
spicuous phraseology  which  dull  men  use  to  express  their 
homely  opinions,  seems  to  be  the  great  art  of  this  extraordinary 
humorist.  .  .  .  His  is  radically  a  low  and  homely  style 
— without  grace  and  without  affectation — and  chiefly  remark- 
able for  a  great  choice  and  profusion  of  common  words  and 
expressions. ' ' — Samuel  Johnson. 

' '  The  brevity,  the  homeliness,  the  minuteness,  the  un- 
broken seriousness  of  the  narrative  ['  Gulliver  '],  all  give  a 
character  of  truth  and  simplicity  to  the  work.  .  .  .  His 
style  is  chiefly  remarkable  for  a  great  choice  and  profusion 
of  common  words  and  expressions.  .  .  .  Other  writers 
who  have  used  a  plain  and  direct  style  have  been  for 
the  most  part  jejeune  and  limited  in  their  diction,  and 
generally  give  us  an  impression  of  the  poverty  as  well  as 
of  the  tameness  of  their  language.  Swift,  without  ever  tres- 
passing into  figures  or  poetical  expressions,  or  ever  em- 
ploying a  word  that  can  be  called  fine  or  pedantic,  has  a 
prodigious  variety  of  good  set  phrases  always  at  his  command, 
and  displays  a  sort  of  homely  richness,  like  the  plenty  of  an 
old  English  dinner  or  the  wardrobe  of  a  wealthy  burgess." 
—Jeffrey. 

"Swift's  prose  is  never  ungainly;  it  is  simple  and  clear 
and  direct,  absolutely  free  from  affectation  or  'curious  care," 
never  seeking  mere  rhetorical  effects  ;  but  it  is  not  the  less 
polished  to  a  smooth  and  brilliant  surface — not  the  polish  of 
elaboration,  but  the  fine  chiselled  surface  of  a  mind  that 
thought  clearly  and  exactly." — Stanley  Lane-Poole. 

"  His  writings  exhibit  no  tendency  to  exaggeration  or 
bombast ;  no  fallacious  images  or  far-fetched  analogies ;  no 
timid  phrases  in  which  the  expression  hangs  loosely  and  in- 
accurately around  the  meaning.  .  .  .  His  arguments  are 
so  plain  that  the  weakest  mind  can  grasp  them,  yet  so  logical 


SWIFT  189 

that  it  is  seldom  possible  to  evade  their  force.  .  .  .  His 
style  is  always  clear,  keen,  nervous,  and  exact.  He  delights  in 
the  most  homely  Saxon,  in  the  simplest  and  most  unadorned 
sentences. ' ' — Lecky. 

"  Nothing  shows  Swift's  genius  in  these  Irish  tracts  more 
conclusively  than  the  marvellously  simple  materials  with 
which  he  maintains  their  force.  ...  So  vivid  is  the  im- 
aginative power  [in  'The  Legion  Club  ']  of  his  descriptions, 
that,  as  we  read,  we  seem  to  see  the  gibbering  of  the  madmen, 
twisting  their  straws,  tugging  at  their  chains,  and  making 
the  place  hideous  with  their  foul  and  loathsome  bestialities. 
His  style  is  free  from  all  tricks  and  peculiarities ;  it 
holds  to  its  purpose  with  absolute  directness  and  lucidity. 
It  has  no  balanced  periods,  no  ornaments ;  even  grammatical 
regularity  is  sometimes  wanting.  But  with  dramatic  nicety  it 
suits  the  character  in  which  he  speaks,  and  he  bends  it  to  his 
purpose  with  the  unconscious  skill  with  which  a  well-trained 
fencer  turns  his  foil.  .  .  .  His  power  was  to  be  shown  by 
the  lucidity  and  the  skill  of  expression.  .  .  .  He  sought 
to  make  himself,  above  all,  simple,  clear,  and  logical  in  his 
method.  .  .  .  The  strength  of  Swift's  prose  lies  in  its 
clearness  and  in  its  flexibility  rather  than  in  its  technical  cor- 
rectness."—  G.  L.  Craik. 

"  He  says  what  he  means  in  the  homeliest  native  English  that 
can  be  conceived.  .  .  .  His  sentences  are  self-sufficient, 
and  fit  the  occasion  as  a  glove  the  hand." — T.  H.  Ward. 

"  He  is  explicit  in  referring  to  what  has  been  said,  what  is 
to  come,  and  what  is  the  connection  of  one  theory  with  an- 
other. .  .  .  When  he  writes  seriously,  his  language  is 
simple,  unadorned,  and  designed  above  everything  to  con- 
vey his  meaning  directly." — Minto. 

"  At  a  time  when  elegance  was  thought  to  be  all  in  all  in 
writing,  he  showed  what  power  lay  in  a  simple,  virile  style,  and 
what  plain,  homely  words  could  do  when  managed  by  a  mas- 
ter's hand." — Lowell. 


190  SWIFT 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  have  been  frequently  assured  by  great  ministers  that  poli- 
tics were  nothing  but  common  sense  ;  which,  as  it  was  the  only 
true  thing  they  spoke,  so  it  was  the  only  thing  they  could  have 
wished  I  should  not  believe." — Some  Free  Thoughts,  etc. 

"  It  is  great  fault  among  you  that  when  a  person  writes  with  no 
other  intention  than  to  do  you  goo4,  you  will  not  be  at  the  pains 
to  read  his  advices.  One  copy  of  this  paper  may  serve  a  dozen 
of  you,  which  will  be  less  than  a  farthing  apiece." — The  Drapier's 
Letters. 

"A  great  minister  puts  you  a  case  and  asks  your  opinion,  but 
conceals  an  essential  circumstance,  upon  which  the  whole  weight 
of  the  matter  turns  ;  then  he  despises  your  understanding  for 
councilling  him  no  better,  and  concludes  he  ought  to  trust  en- 
tirely to  his  own  wisdom." — Some  Free  Thoughts,  etc. 

"  And  I  defy  the  greatest  divine  to  produce  any  law,  either  of 
God  or  man,  which  obliges  me  to  comprehend  the  meaning  of 
omniscience,  omnipresence,  ubiquity,  attribute,  beatific  vision,  with 
a  thousand  others  so  frequent  in  pulpits,  any  more  than  that  of 
eccentric,  idiosyncrasy,  entity,  and  the  like."— Letter  to  a  Young 
Clergyman. 

5.  Vehement  Invective — Insolence. — While  satire 
is  Swift's  favorite  weapon,  he  frequently  descends  to  use  a 
bludgeon  where  Addison  would  wield  a  stiletto.  Says  Taine, 
"  He  knows  life  as  a  banker  knows  accounts  ;  and,  his  total 
once  made  up,  he  scorns  or  knocks  the  babblers  who  dispute 
it  in  his  presence."  He  is  given  to  the  use  of  such  terms  as 
bully,  sharper,  rake,  and  the  like.  In  the  words  of  Thackeray : 
"It  is  Samson  with  a  bone  in  his  hand,  rushing  on  his  ene- 
mies and  felling  them." 

"  Their  ['  Tale  of  a  Tub  '  and  '  Gulliver  ']  distinguishing 
feature,  however,  is  the  force  and  vehemence  of  the  invective 
in  which  they  abound — the  copiousness,  the  steadiness,  the 
perseverance,  and  the  dexterity  with  which  abuse  and  ridicule 


SWIFT  191 

are  showered  upon  the  adversary.  This,  we  think,  was  be- 
yond all  doubt  Swift's  great  talent  and  the  weapon  by  which 
he  made  himself  formidable.  .  .  .  Almost  all  his  works 
are  libels;  generally  upon  individuals,  sometimes  upon  sects 
and  parties,  sometimes  upon  human  nature.  Whatever  be  his 
end,  however,  personal  abuse,  direct,  vehement,  unsparing  in- 
vective, is  his  means.  .  .  .  There  is  no  spirit,  indeed,  of 
love  or  of  honor  in  any  part  of  them, -but  an  unvaried  and  harass- 
ing display  of  insolence  and  animosity  in  the  writer  and  vil- 
lany  and  folly  in  those  of  whom  he  is  writing.  .  .  .  He 
seems  always  to  think  the  most  effectual  blows  the  most  advis- 
able and  no  advantage  unlawful  that  is  likely  to  be  successful 
for  the  moment.  Disregarding  all  the  laws  of  polished  hos- 
tility, he  uses  at  one  and  the  same  moment  his  sword  and  his 
poisoned  dagger,  his  hands  and  his  teeth  and  his  envenomed 
breath.  .  .  .  The  invective  of  Swift  appears  in  this  ['  The 
Legion  Club '  ]  and  some  other  pieces  like  the  infernal  fire  of 
Milton's  rebel  angels,  which 

'  Scorch'd  and  blasted  and  o'erthrew ' 

and  was  launched  even  against  the  righteous  with  such  impet- 
uous fury, 

'  That  whom  it  hit  none  on  their  feet  might  stand, 
Though  standing  else  as  rocks — but  down  they  tell 
By  thousands,  angel  on  archangel  rolled.' 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  remark,  however,  that  there  is  never 
the  least  approach  to  dignity  or  nobleness  in  the  style  of  these 
terrible  invectives.  .  .  .  They  are  honest,  coarse,  and  vio- 
lent effusions  of  furious  rage  and  rancorous  hatred." — -Jeffrey. 
"Its  ['A  Proposal  for  the  Universal  Use  of  Irish  Manu- 
factures ']  power  lies  in  its  variety.  Indignant  earnestness  is 
subtly  varied  by  sarcasm,  straight  blows  of  invective  by  deli- 
cate irony.  •  •  •  The  most  withering  of  all  his  poetic 


192  SWIFT 

satires  is  '  The  Legion  Club. '  His  fury  bursts  all  bounds  in 
the  storm  of  abuse  and  ridicule  and  utter  scorn  that  he  pours 
upon  the  august  assembly." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"He  delighted  in  a  strain  of  ribald  abuse.  .  .  .  He 
possessed  powers  of  satire  perhaps  as  terrible  as  have  ever  been 
granted  to  a  human  being." — Lecky. 

"  They  ['  The  Drapier's  Letters  ']  are  masterpieces  of  dread- 
ful humor  and  invective.  .  .  .  The  assault  is  wonderful 
for  its  terrible  rage." — Thackeray. 

"  The  personal  satire  of  Swift  is  often  not  only  merciless 
but  wholly  unjustifiable." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  His  ordinary  style  is  grave  irony.  .  .  .  Swift  has 
the  genius  of  insult ;  he  is  the  inventor  of  irony,  as  Shake- 
speare of  poetry,  and,  as  beseems  an  extreme  force,  he  goes  to 
extremes  in  his  thought  and  art." — Taine. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  humbly  gave  the  modern  generals  to  understand  that  he 
conceived,  with  great  submission,  they  were  all  a  pack  of  rogues 

and  fools  and  d d  cowards  and  confounded  loggerheads  and 

illiterate  whelps  and  nonsensical  scoundrels." — The  Battle  of  the 
Books. 

"  '  Not  to  disparage  myself,'  said  he,  'by  the  comparison  with 
such  a  rascal,  what  art  thou  but  a  vagabond  without  house  or 
home,  without  stock  or  inheritance,  born  to  no  possession  of 
your  own  but  a  pair  of  wings  and  a  drone-pipe  ?  Your  liveli- 
hood is  a  universal  plunder  upon  nature  ;  a  freebooter  over 
fields  and  gardens  ;  and  for  the  sake  of  stealing,  will  rob  a  nettle 
as  easily  as  a  violet.'  "—The  Battle  of  the  Books. 

"  When  I  reflect  on  this  I  cannot  conceive  you  to  be  human 
creatures,  but  a  sort  of  species  hardly  a  degree  above  a  monkey  ; 
who  has  more  diverting  tricks  than  any  of  you,  is  an  animal  less 
mischievous  and  expensive,  might  in  time  be  a  tolerable  critic  in 
velvet  and  brocade,  and,  for  aught  I  know,  would  equally  become 
them." — Letter  to  a  Young  Lady  on  her  Marriage. 

"  I  can  discover  no  political  evil  in  suffering  bullies,  sharpers, 


SWIFT  IQ3 

and  rakes  to  rid  the  world  of  each  other  by  a  method  of  their 
own,  where  the  law  has  not  been  able  to  find  an  expedient." — On 
Good  Manners. 


6.  Wit— Power  of  Ludicrous  Combination. — "His 
most  grave  themes  were  blended  with  ironical  pleasantry  ; 
and,  in  those  of  a  lighter  nature,  deep  and  bitter  satire  is 
often  concealed  under  the  most  trifling  levity." — Sir  Walter 
Scott. 

"In  his  various  works  we  find  one  quality  almost  always 
predominant — an  imperturbable  humor  ;  and  from  this  lam- 
bent spirit  of  pleasantry  nothing  human  or  divine  was  safe. 
The  magnificence  of  Swift's  anger,  scintillating  with 
wit,  glowing  with  passion,  throws  its  cometary  splendor  right 
across  the  Augustan  heavens." — Edmund  Gosse. 

"  As  all  know,  it  is  in  his  character  as  a  humorist,  an  in- 
ventor of  the  preposterous,  as  a  medium  for  the  reflective,  and 
above  all  as  a  master  of  irony,  that  he  takes  his  place  as  one 
of  the  chiefs  of  English  literature." — David  Masson. 

"  He  never  attempted  any  species  of  composition  in  which 
either  the  sublime  or  the  pathetic  was  required  of  him  ;  but 
in  every  department  of  poetry  where  wit  is  necessary  he  dis- 
played, as  the  subject  chanced  to  require,  either  the  blasting 
lightning  of  satire  or  the  lambent,  meteor-like  coruscations  of 
frolicsome  humor." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  For  the  qualities  of  sheer  wit  and  humor  Swift  had  no 
superior,  ancient  or  modern  ;  ...  his  wit  was  perfect, 
as  such — a  sheer  meeting  of  the  extremes  of  difference  and 
likeness. ' '  — Leigh  Hunt. 

"  In  '  Lilliput '  the  humor  is  on  the  surface  :  the  satire  is 
only  occasional.  ...  By  nothing  did  he  affect  men 
more  than  by  his  marvellous  combination  of  the  grimmest 
earnestness  with  the  most  mocking  humor.  In  its  latter  and 
more  matured  form,  his  wit  itself  became  earnest  and  passion- 
ate, and  has  a  severity,  a  fierceness,  a  saera  indignatio,  that 
13 


194  SWIFT 

are  all  his  own,  and  that  have  never  been  blended  in  any 
other  writer  with  so  keen  a  perception  of  the  ludicrous  and 
so  much  general  comic  power.  The  breadth  of  his  rich,  pun- 
gent, original  jocularity  is  at  the  same  time  cutting  as  a 
sword  and  consuming  as  fire." — G.  L.  Craik. 

11  His  wit  was  perfectly  unbridled.  His  unrivalled  power 
of  ludicrous  combination  seldom  failed  to  get  the  better  of  his 
prudence  ;  and  he  found  it  impossible  to  resist  a  jest.  .  .  . 
His  wit  is  a  species  of  argument."—  Lecky. 

"  He  had  more  humor  in  him  than  Pope,  who  had  it  not 
in  him  to  produce  a  downright  side-shaking  bit  of  rollicking 
fun.  There  is  more  laughter  altogether  about  Swift's  satire. 
.  .  .  The  Dean  had  a  real  humorous  side." — -J.  Hannay. 

"His  humor,  though  sufficiently  marked  and  peculiar,  is 
not  to  be  easily  defined.  The  nearest  description  we  can 
give  of  it  would  make  it  consist  in  expressing  sentiments  the 
most  absurd  and  ridiculous,  the  most  shocking  and  atrocious, 
or  sometimes  the  most  energetic  and  original,  in  a  sort  of 
composed,  calm,  and  unconscious  way,  as  if  they  were  plain, 
undeniable,  commonplace  truths,  which  no  person  could  dis- 
pute or  gain  credit  by  announcing,  and  in  maintaining  them 
always  in  the  gravest  and  most  familiar  language,  with  a  con- 
sistency which  somewhat  palliates  their  extravagance,  and  a 
kind  of  perverted  ingenuity  which  seems  to  give  pledge  for 
their  sincerity.  The  secret,  in  short,  seems  to  consist  in  em- 
ploying the  language  of  humble  good  sense  and  simple,  un- 
doubting  conviction  to  express  in  their  honest  nakedness 
sentiments  which  it  is  usually  thought  necessary  to  disguise 
under  a  thousand  pretences,  or  truths  which  are  usually  in- 
troduced with  a  thousand  apologies." — Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  These  papers  are  delivered  to  a  set  of  artists,  very  dextrous 
in  finding  out  the  mysterious  meanings  of  words,  syllables,  and 
letters  ;  for  instance,  they  can  discover  a  flock  of  geese  to  signify 
a  senate  ;  a  lame  dog,  an  invader ;  the  plague,  a  standing  army  ; 


SWIFT  195 

a  buzzard,  a  prime  minister  ;  the  gout,  a  high  priest  ;  a  gibbet,  a 
secretary  of  state  ;  a  sieve,  a  court  lady  ;  a  broom,  a  revolution ;  a 
mousetrap,  an  employment;  a  bottomless  pit,  a  treasury;  a  sink, 
a  court  ;  a  cap  and  bells,  a  favorite  ;  a  broken  reed,  a  court  of  jus- 
tice ;  an  empty  tun,  a  general." — Gulliver's  Travels. 

"They  bury  their  dead  with  their  heads  directly  downward, 
because  they  hold  an  opinion  that  in  eleven  thousand  moons  they 
are  all  to  rise  again  ;  in  which  period  the  earth  (which  they  con- 
ceive to  be  flat)  will  turn  upside  down,  and  by  this  means  they 
shall,  at  their  resurrection,  be  found  ready  standing  on  their 
feet. " — Gulliver's  Travels. 

"  What  is  man  himself  but  a  microcoat,  or  rather  a  complete 
suit  of  clothes  with  all  its  trimmings  ?  As  to  his  body  there  can 
be  no  dispute  ;  but  examine  even  the  acquirements  of  his  mind, 
you  will  find  them  all  contribute  in  their  order  towards  furnish- 
ing an  exact  dress  ;  to  instance  no  more,  is  not  religion  a  cloak, 
honesty  a  pair  of  shoes  worn  out  in  the  dirt,  self-love  a  surtout, 
vanity  a  shirt,  and  conscience  a  pair  of  breeches?  " — Tale  of  a 
Tub. 

7.  Coarseness. — "  His  intensity  of  loathing  leads  him 
to  besmear  his  antagonists  with  filth.  He  becomes  disgusting 
in  the  effort  to  express  disgust.  .  .  .  He  tears  aside  the 
veil  of  decency  to  show  the  bestial  elements  of  human  nat- 
ure." — L  eslie  Steph  en . 

"  [He  is]  a  monster  gibbering  shrieks  [in  the  fourth  part 
of  '  Gulliver's  Travels  ']  and  gnashing  imprecations  against 
mankind — tearing  down  all  shreds  of  modesty,  past  all  sense 
of  manliness  and  shame  ;  filthy  in  word,  filthy  in  thought, 
furious,  raging,  obscene!  " — Thackeray. 

"  He  seems  to  delight  in  low  metaphors  and  gross  allu- 
sions. His  coarseness  is  gratuitous  and  his  smut  deliberate. 
Indeed,  the  vulgarity  of  Swift  is  sometimes  unendurable." 
— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"Persons  of  delicate  and  refined  taste  have  been  hurt  by 
its  ['  Gulliver's  Travels  ']  grossness,  and  those  of  more  severe 
and  religious  feelings  have  marked  it  with  that  moral  dis- 


196  SWIFT 

approbation  which  rejects  a  work  so  wide  in  its  temper  and 
feeling  from  the  spirit  of  Christianity." — John  Mitford. 

"  All  his  jests  have  the  same  character  and  insolence  and 
coarseness.  He  does  not  even  scruple,  upon  occasion,  to  imi- 
tate his  own  Yahoos,  by  discharging  upon  his  unhappy  victims 
a  shower  of  filth,  from  which  neither  courage  nor  dexterity  can 
afford  any  protection.  .  .  .  The  greater  part  of  the  wis- 
dom and  satire  [of  'Gulliver's  Travels  ']  appears  to  us  to  be 
extremely  vulgar  and  commonplace.  .  .  .  If  he  can  make 
his  victim  writhe  .  .  .  he  is  contented,  provided  he  can 
make  him  sufficiently  disgusting,  that  a  good  share  of  the  filth 
that  he  throws  should  stick  to  his  own  fingers.  ...  In 
humor  and  in  irony,  and  in  the  talent  for  debasing  and  defil- 
ing what  he  hated,  we  join  with  all  the  world  in  thinking 
the  Dean  of  Saint  Patrick's  without  a  rival." — -Jeffrey. 

"  In  the  process  of  '  debasing  and  defiling  '  he  sometimes 
condescends  to  use  the  language  of  the  brothel.  .  .  .  His 
allusions  are  often  extremely  gross." — Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS.  ^ 

"  This  honest,  civil,  ingenious  gentleman  knows  in  his  con- 
science that  there  are  not  ten  clergymen  in  England  except  non- 
jurors  who  do  not  abhor  the  thought  of  the  Pretender  reigning 
over  us  much  more  than  himself.  Yet  this  is  the  spittle  of  the 
bishop  of  Sarum,  which  our  author  licks  up  and  swallows,  and 
then  coughs  out  again  with  an  addition  of  his  own  phlegm." 
—The  Public  Spirit  of  the  Whigs. 

"  Erect  your  schemes  with  as  much  method  and  skill  as  you 
please  ;  yet,  if  the  materials  be  nothing  but  dirt,  spun  out  of  your 
own  entrails,  the  edifice  will  conclude  at  last  in  a  cobweb  ;  the 
duration  of  which,  like  that  of  other  spiders'  webs,  may  be  im- 
puted to  their  being  forgotten  or  neglected  or  hid  in  a  corner. 
For  anything  else  of  genuine  that  the  moderns  may  pretend  to  I 
cannot  recollect  ;  unless  it  be  a  large  vein  of  wrangling  and  sa- 
tire, much  of  a  nature  and  substance  with  the  spider's  poison, 
which,  however  they  pretend  to  spit  wholly  out  of  themselves,  is 


SWIFT  197 

improved  by  the  same  arts,  by  feeding  upon  the  insects  and  ver- 
min of  the  age." — The  Battle  of  the  Books. 

In  "The  Battle  of  the  Books"  and  in  Swift's  "Direc- 
tions to  Servants"  will  be  found  abundant  illustrations  of 
this  characteristic — some  of  them  so  extreme  as  not  to  bear 
repetition  here. 

8.  Misanthropy.- — "Among  the  '  Houyhnhnms  '  proba- 
bility is  ruthlessly  sacrificed  to  the  wild  pleasure  the  author 
takes  in  trampling  human  pride  in  the  mire  of  his  sarcasm." 
— Edmund  Gosse. 

"  In  '  Gulliver '  we  have  a  satire  on  the  various  classes  of 
men  and  their  occupations  .  .  .  and  satires  on  human 
nature  and  human  society  down  to  their  very  foundations." 
— David  Mas  son. 

"  In  parts  of  his  work  there  is  a  sort  of  heartiness  of  abuse 
and  contempt  of  mankind  which  produces  a  greater  sympathy 
and  animation  in  the  reader  than  the  most  elaborate  sarcasms 
that  have  since  come  into  fashion.  .  .  ." — Jeffrey. 

"The  satires  proceeding  from  his  later,  most  disappointed 
years  are  almost  fiendish  in  the  calm  malignity  of  their  expos- 
ure of  the  weakness  and  follies  of  mankind.  .  .  .  'Gulli- 
ver's Travels'  ...  is  the  most  ferocious  satire  on  entire 
humanity  ever  written.  It  is  a  mockery  of  the  spectacle  of 
life  such  as  has  never  proceeded  from  any  other  unbelieving 
and  misbelieving  soul.  Its  author  rejoices  to  degrade  what- 
ever in  us  is  worthy  and  to  set  on  high  all  the  foulness  and  sin 
of  which  human  nature  is  capable." — N.  P.  Giltnan. 

"  Of  all  the  creations  of  his  fancy  it  ['  The  Voyage  to  the 
Land  of  the  Houyhnhnms']  is  the  most  improbable;  it  is 
filled  with  such  a  fierce  indignation  against  the  frailties  and 
vices  to  which  our  nature  is  so  prone  ;  ...  it  indulges  in 
such  a  fiendish  mockery  of  the  degraded  species,  and  holds  up 
such  hideous  representations  of  the  loathsome  depravity  of  our 
sins,  while  it  renders  its  satire  more  effective  by  drawing 


198  SWIFT 

through  it  the  richest  vein  of  ridicule  and  the  most  pointed 
wit." — -John  Mitford. 

"  Swift  exempts  from  his  ridicule  no  profession,  no  faith, 
hardly  any  institution,  hardly  any  character.  .  .  .  All 
come  in  for  a  cut  of  his  stinging  lash." — Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  daughters  of  great  and  rich  families,  computed  after  the 
same  manner,  will  hardly  amount  to  half  the  number  of  the  male  ; 
because  the  care  of  their  education  is  either  entirely  left  to  their 
mothers  or  they  are  sent  to  boarding  schools  or  put  into  the  hands 
of  English  or  French  governesses,  and  generally  the  worst  that  can 
be  gotten  for  the  money.  So  that,  after  the  reduction  I  was  com- 
pelled to,  from  two  thousand  to  one,  half  the  number  of  well-edu- 
cated nobility  and  gentry  must  either  continue  in  a  single  life,  or 
be  forced  to  couple  themselves  with  women  for  whom  they  can 
possibly  have  no  esteem  ;  I  mean  fools,  prudes,  coquettes,  game- 
sters, saunterers,  endless  talkers  of  nonsense,  splenetic  idlers, 
intriguers,  given  to  scandal  and  censure." — On  the  Education  of 
Ladies. 

"  I  have  ever  hated  all  societies,  professions,  and  communities  ; 
and  all  my  love  is  toward  individuals.  .  .  .  But  principally  I 
hate  and  detest  that  animal  called  man  —  although  I  heartily 
love  John,  Peter,  Thomas,  and  so  on." — Letter  to  Mr.  Pope. 

"  But  instead  of  proposals  for  conquering  that  magnanimous 
nation,  I  rather  wish  they  were  in  a  capacity  or  disposition  to  send 
a  sufficient  number  of  their  inhabitants  for  civilizing  Europe  by- 
teaching  us  the  first  principles  of  honour,  justice,  truth,  temper- 
ance, public  spirit,  fortitude,  chastity,  friendship,  benevolence, 
and  fidelity." — A  Voyage  to  the  Houyhnhnms. 

"  And  pray,  what  is  man  but  a  topsy-turvy  creature,  his  animal 
faculties  perpetually  mounted  on  his  rational,  his  head  where  his 
heels  should  be — grovelling  on  the  earth  !  and  yet,  with  all  his 
faults,  he  sets  up  to  be  a  universal  reformer  and  corrector  of 
abuses,  a  remover  of  grievances  ;  rakes  into  every  slut's  corner  of 
nature,  bringing  hidden  corruptions  to  light,  and  raises  a  mighty 
dust  where  there  was  none  before,  sharing  deeply  all  the  while  in 
the  very  same  pollutions  he  pretends  to  sweep  away."  — The  Tale 
of  a  Tub. 


GOLDSMITH,  1728-1744 

Biographical  Outline. — Oliver  Goldsmith,  born  at 
Pallas,  near  Ballymahon,  Ireland,  November  10,  1728  ;  father 
then  a  curate  and  small  farmer,  mother  the  daughter  of  a 
clergyman  ;  Goldsmith's  father  becomes  rector  of  Kilkenny 
West  in  1 730,  and  the  family  settle  at  Lissoy  ;  Goldsmith  learns 
his  letters  from  a  Mrs.  Delap,  who  thought  him  "  impenetrably 
stupid  ;  "  later  he  attends  the  village  school  of  Lissoy,  kept  by 
an  old  soldier  named  Thomas  Byrne  ;  Goldsmith  is  a  dull 
pupil,  but  reads  chap-books,  learns  ballads,  and  makes  juve- 
nile rhymes;  his  school-life  is  interrupted  by  a  severe  attack  of 
small-pox,  which  leaves  his  face  badly  marked  ;  later  he  stud- 
ies under  a  Mr.  Griffin  at  Elphin  School ;  between  1739  and 
1741  he  is  in  a  school  at  Athlone,  and  goes  thence  to  a  school 
at  Edgeworthstown,  where  his  cleverness  attracts  attention  ;  on 
June  n,  1744,  he  enters  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  as  a  sizar, 
being  forced  to  take  that  menial  position  because  of  the  econ- 
omy necessary  that  his  father  may  provide  Goldsmith's  sister 
with  an  extravagant  marriage-portion  ;  his  tutor  at  Trinity, 
one  Wilder,  is  harsh  and  brutal ;  Goldsmith  is  humiliated  by 
his  position  as  sizar,  and  rebels  against  the  mathematics  and 
logic  that  he  is  compelled  to  study ;  he  receives  some  aid 
from  an  uncle  by  marriage,  but  often  has  to  pawn  his  books 
and  to  earn  his  living  by  writing  street-ballads,  which  he  sells 
for  five  shillings  each;  in  May,  1747,  he  narrowly  escapes  ex- 
pulsion for  conspiring  with  other  students  to  duck  certain  bail- 
iffs in  the  college  cistern  ;  in  the  following  June  he  tries  in 
vain  to  secure  a  scholarship  given-  on  examination,  but  wins 
an  "exhibition"  worth  thirty  shillings  a  year;  he  gives  a 
supper  and  a  dance-  to  celebrate  his  good  fortune,  is  inter - 

199 


200  GOLDSMITH 

rupted  by  his  tutor,  is  "  chastised,"  and  straightway  sells  his 
books  and  runs  away  to  Cork;  a  reconciliation  with  the  tutor 
is  effected  by  Goldsmith's  brother,  who  had  been  a  pensioner 
at  Trinity,  and  who  held  a  scholarship  there ;  Goldsmith's 
father  dies  early  in  1747;  Goldsmith  takes  A. B.  at  Dublin  in 
February,  1749;  after  leaving  the  university  he  occasionally 
assists  in  his  brother's  school  at  Pallas,  loafs  about  the  town 
of  Ballymahon  (where  his  mother  lived  in  poverty),  declines 
to  take  holy  orders,  plays  the  flute,,  and  throws  the  hammer ; 
through  his  uncle  he  obtains  a  tutorship  with  one  Mr.  Flinn, 
but  soon  resigns,  obtains  a  good  horse  and  thirty  pounds,  and 
starts  for  Cork,  intending  to  sail  thence  for  America ;  he 
misses  his  ship,  and  soon  returns  to  Ballymahon  with  a  poor 
horse  and  no  money ;  he  then  borrows  ,£50  from  his 
Uncle  Contarine,  starts  for  London  to  study  law,  and  soon 
returns  to  Ballymahon,  after  losing  the  money  in  gambling 
at  Dublin ;  he  is  again  aided  by  his  uncle,  his  brother,  and 
his  sister,  and  goes  to  Edinburgh  in  the  autumn  of  1752  to 
study  medicine;  joins  a  students'  club  called  "The  Medical 
Society,"  tells  stories,  sings  songs,  and  is  generally  popular  ; 
he  makes  a  tour  of  the  Highlands  early  in  1753;  he  deter- 
mines to  finish  his  medical  studies  abroad,  pays  his  debts  by 
means  of  a  loan  from  two  college  friends,  sails  for  Bordeaux, 
is  driven  into  Newcastle  by  rough  weather,  and,  with  other 
passengers,  is  imprisoned  for  two  weeks  on  the  false  charge  of 
having  enlisted  in  the  French  service  in  Scotland  ;  on  his  re- 
lease he  sails  for  Rotterdam  and  goes  thence  to  Leyden, 
where  a  fellow-countryman  lends  him  money,  which  he  forth- 
with expends  in  bulbs  for  his  Uncle  Contarine;  early  in  1755 
he  starts  on  his  famous  pilgrimage,  "  with  one  clean  shirt  and 
next  to  no  money;  "  his  exact  itinerary  is  unknown,  but  he 
probably  visited  Louvain,  Paris,  Strasburg,  several  points  in 
Germany  and  Switzerland,  Venice,  Padua  (where  he  is  sup- 
posed to  have  studied  six  months),  Carinthia,  and  thence  back 
through  France  to  Dover,  landing  February  i,  1756  ;  he  trav- 


GOLDSMITH  2OI 

elled  principally  on  foot,  and  supported  himself  by  playing  on 
his  flute,  except  in  Italy,  where  he  engaged  in  disputations  at 
the  universities  and  convents ;  he  is  said  to  have  taken  a  medi- 
cal degree  at  Louvain,  but  all  the  alleged  details  of  his  tour  are 
doubtful ;  he  reaches  London  in  great  destitution,  probably 
tries  acting  and  school-teaching,  soon  becomes  assistant  to  a 
chemist  on  Fish  Street  Hill,  and  later,  through  the  aid  of  his 
friend  Dr.  Sleigh,  sets  up  as  a  physician  in.Bankside,  South- 
wark;  he  is  unsuccessful  as  a  physician,  writes  tragedy  (?), 
proposes  to  travel  to  Sinai  to  decipher  "  the  written  moun- 
tains," reads  proof,  and,  late  in  1756,  becomes  an  usher  in  a 
school  at  Peckham  kept  by  Dr.  Milner,  a  dissenting  minister, 
whose  son  Goldsmith  had  known  at  Edinburgh ;  at  Milner's 
house  he  meets  Griffiths,  proprietor  of  the  Monthly  Review, 
and  agrees  to  write  for  the  Review,  receiving  in  return  his 
lodging  and  "an  adequate  salary;"  he  is  engaged  on  the 
Review  from  April  till  September,  1757;  he  writes  also  for 
other  periodicals,  and  translates  "Memoirs  of  Jean  Marteilhe," 
published  in  1758 ;  he  leaves  Griffiths's  employ  because  he  is 
disgusted  with  the  way  in  which  his  manuscript  is  "edited  " 
by  that  worthy  and  his  wife ;  he  returns  for  a  while  to  Dr. 
Milner,  and  then  "  makes  shift  to  live  by  a  very  little  practice 
as  a  physician  ;  "  during  1758  he  publishes  an  essay  on  "  The 
Present  State  of  Taste  and  Literature  in  Europe,"  and  solicits 
subscribers  for  the  same;  he  obtains,  through  Milner,  an 
appointment  as  physician  to  a  factory  on  the  coast  of  Coro- 
mandel  promising  an  income  of  ^£1,100;  tries  the  requisite 
preliminary  examination  December  i,  1758,  and  fails  ;  he  bor- 
rowed from  Griffiths  the  suit  of  clothes  in  which  he  appeared 
at  the  examination,  and  wrote  four  articles  for  the  Monthly 
Review  in  payment;  during  1759  he  writes  for  Griffiths  a 
superficial  life  of  Voltaire,  and  receives  twenty  pounds  for  his 
work;  the  "Life"  is  published  in  the  Lady's  Magazine 
(then  published  by  Griffiths),  in  1761  ;  about  1759  Gold- 
smith takes  a  lodging  at  1 2  Green  Arbour  Court,  near  the  Old 


2O2  GOLDSMITH 

Bailey,  and  begins  to  acquire  some  reputation  and  social 
standing;  his  essay  on  "Polite  Learning "  attracts  Thomas 
(afterward  Bishop)  Percy,  who  was  then  collecting  materials 
for  his  "  Reliques,"  and  Percy  calls  on  Goldsmith,  whom  he 
finds  living  in  squalor ;  Goldsmith  also  meets  Smollett,  then 
editor  of  the  Critical  Review,  to  which  Goldsmith  contrib- 
utes during  1757-59;  during  1759-60  he  also  writes  for  the 
British  Magazine  (started  by  Smollett),  The  Lady's  Maga- 
zine, the  Bee,  and  the  Busybody ;  in  1760  he  enters  into 
an  agreement  with  John  Newbery,  a  "philanthropic  book- 
seller" of  St.  Paul's  Churchyard,  by  which  Goldsmith  is 
to  contribute  two  papers  a  week  to  the  Public  Ledger 
(started  by  Newbery,  January  12,  1760)  and  is  to  receive 
therefor  the  stated  sum  of  ^100  a  year;  here  appeared  his 
"Chinese  Letters,"  ninety-eight  papers  in  all,  which  were 
reprinted  in  book  form  in  1762  under  the  title  "A  Citi- 
zen of  the  World  ;  "the  "  Letters"  add  to  his  reputation  and 
his  social  standing,  and  in  1760  he  removes  to  better  lodg- 
ings at  6  Wine  Office  Court,  Fleet  Street  ;  here  he  is  visited 
by  Johnson  (whom  Goldsmith  had  previously  complimented 
in  the  Bee}  on  May  31,  1761,  and  thus  begins  a  friendship 
that  serves  greatly  to  aid  Goldsmith  ;  about  this  time  he  ap- 
plies in  vain  to  Garrick  for  aid  in  securing  the  secretaryship 
of  the  Society  of  Arts,  then  vacant;  during  1762  Goldsmith 
does  hack-work  for  Newbery,  writing  some  seven  volumes, 
including  the  paper  on  "  The  Cock  Lane  Ghost,"  his  "  His- 
tory of  Mecklenburgh,"  "A  Compendium  of  Biography," 
etc.  ;  Prior  estimates  Goldsmith's  income  during  1762  at  be- 
low ^120;  he  removes  to  Islington  late  in  1762,  and  con- 
tinues to  do  hack-work  for  Newbery,  from  whom  he  borrows 
money  in  1763;  he  probably  writes  "  A  History  of  England 
in  a  Series  of  Letters  from  a  Nobleman  to  His  Son,"  pub- 
lished in  1764;  about  this  time,  in  company  with  Johnson, 
Burke,  Reynolds,  Garrick,  and  others,  he  aids  in  form- 
ing the  famous  Turk's  Head  Club;  he  is  still  considered 


GOLDSMITH  203 

"a  mere  literary  drudge,"  though  Johnson  calls  him  "one  of 
the  first  men  we  now  have  as  an  author;"  on  the  publica- 
tion of  "The  Traveller,"  Dec.  19,  1764,  Johnson's  opinion 
is  suddenly  and  generally  adopted;  "  The  Traveller"  passed 
through  four  editions  in  1765,  and  reached  a  ninth  edition 
by  1774;  Goldsmith  received  twenty  guineas  for  the  manu- 
script of  the  poem  and  probably  twenty  more  on  its  success ; 
his  new  fame  brings  him  to  the  notice  of  Robert  Nugent 
(afterward  Viscount  Clare)  and  through  Nugent  to  that  of  the 
Karl  of  Northumberland,  then  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland ; 
the  Earl  offers  to  aid  Goldsmith,  but  he  unwisely  declines  and 
recommends  his  brother  Henry  instead;  later  he  writes  his 
ballad  "Edwin  and  Angelina"  for  the  amusement  of  the 
Countess  of  Northumberland  ;  a  collection  of  his  essays  is 
published  in  1765,  and  he  again  tries  in  vain  to  set  up  as  a 
physician  ;  on  March  26,  1766,  he  publishes  "  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield,"  written  before  "  The  Traveller  "  was  published  ; 
through  Johnson's  agency  he  obtains  £60  for  the  manu- 
script of  "The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  and  thus  secures  re- 
lease from  his  landlady,  who  had  just  arrested  him  for  non- 
payment of  rent ;  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield ' '  establishes  Gold- 
smith's reputation  ;  he  removes  to  Temple  Court  and  resides 
there,  at  2  Bench  Court,  till  his  death,  except  for  frequent  short 
sojourns  in  the  country;  during  1771-74  he  writes  "She 
Stoops  to  Conquer,"  and  works  on  his  "Animated  Nature" 
at  a  farm  near  Hyde  ;  he  is  devoted  to  society,  masquerading, 
and  gaming,  but  continues  to  do  hack-work  for  booksellers  ; 
in  December,  1766,  he  publishes  "  Poems  for  Young  Ladies," 
for  which  he  receives  ten  guineas,  and  in  April,  1767,  "  The 
Beauties  of  English  Poesy,"  for  which  he  receives  probably 
fifty  guineas;  in  1769  Dennis  pays  him  two  hundred  and 
fifty  guineas  for  the  manuscript  of  "  A  History  of  Rome;  " 
in  1770  appeared  his  lives  of  Parnell  and  Bolingbroke,  in 
1771  his  "English  History,"  for  which  he  was  to  receive 
five  hundred  guineas,  and  in  1773  his  "Greek  History," 


2O4  GOLDSMITH 

for  which  Dennis  paid  him  ^250  ;  his  "  Animated  Nature," 
which  he  had  agreed  in  1769  to  write  for  Griffin — eight 
volumes  at  one  .hundred  guineas  a  volume — was  not  pub- 
lished till  after  Goldsmith's  death,  though  he  received  full  pay- 
ment ;  early  in  1767  he  offers  his  "  Good-Natured  Man  "  to 
Garrick,  who  refuses  it,  probably  because  of  some  personal  re- 
sentment against  Goldsmith ;  it  is  soon  afterward  accepted  by 
Colman,  but  is  not  played  till  January  28,  1768  ;  at  first  the 
play  is  not  very  successful,  and  the  scene  at  the  bailiffs  is 
hissed  ;  but  after  this  scene  is  omitted  the  play  succeeds,  and 
eventually  brings  to  Goldsmith  ,£500;  on  May  26,  1770,  he 
publishes  "The  Deserted  Village,"  begun  two  years  before; 
it  passes  at  once  through  five  editions;  "  She  Stoops  to  Con- 
quer" is  received  with  hesitation  by  Colman  in  1772,  but  he 
is  finally  induced  by  Johnson  to  stage  it,  and  on  March  15, 
1773,  it  scores  a  great  success,  running  twelve  nights  and 
bringing  to  Goldsmith  £500 ;  he  is  widely  known  and  es- 
teemed in  his  later  years  ;  in  1770  he  visits  Paris  in  company 
with  Mrs.  Horneck  and  her  daughters,  one  of  whom  was  "  the 
Jessamy  bride;  "  in  1771  Goldsmith's  old  enemy,  Kenrick, 
wrote  a  letter  to  the  London  Packet,  insinuating  that  Gold- 
smith's relations  with  the  Hornecks  were  not  proper ;  Gold- 
smith gave  him  a  caning,  and  escaped  prosecution  for  the 
deed  by  promising  ^50  to  a  Welsh  charity  ;  he  visits 
Lord  Clare  at  Bath  in  the  winter  of  1770-71,  and  writes 
"A  Haunch  of  Venison"  in  the  lord's  honor;  in  1773  he 
projects  "A  Dictionary  of  the  Arts  and  Sciences,"  and  is 
promised  articles  by  Johnson,  Burke,  Reynolds,  and  others ; 
one  article  is  written  by  Burney,  but  the  plan  falls  through ; 
Goldsmith  writes  his  last  poem,  "Retaliation,"  probably 
in  February,  1774,  but  it  was  not  published  till  after  his 
death,  which  occurred  at  his  lodgings  at  2  Bench  Court,  Lon- 
don, April  4,  1774;  according  to  Reynolds  he  died  owing 
^2,000. 


GOLDSMITH  2O$ 


BIBLIOGRAPHY    ON    GOLDSMITH'S    STYLE. 

Black,  W.,    "English    Men   of    Letters."     New  York,    1879,    Harper, 

81-87,  etc. 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893, 

Harper,  2 :  55-84. 
Giles,    H.,    "  Lectures  and  Essays."     Boston,   1850,  Ticknor,   Reed  & 

Fields,  218-258. 
De  Quincey,  T.,   "  Works."     Edinburgh,  1890,  A.  &  C.  Black,  4:  288- 

323- 
Goldsmith,  O. ,  "Miscellaneous  Works  "     (D.  Masson).     Philadelphia, 

1872,  Claxton. 
Duyckinck,    E.    A.,  "  Portrait    Gallery."     New  York,    1875,   Johnson, 

Wilson  &  Co.,  I  :  28-43. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  249-256. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  203-221. 
Taine,   H.  A.,   "History  of  English    Literature."      New  York,    1875, 

Holt,  2 :  430-434  and  index. 
Ward,   T.    H.   (Dowden),    "The  English    Poets."     New  York,    1881, 

Macmillan,  3  :  368-373. 
Cary,   H.  F.,   "Lives  of  the  English  Poets."      London,    1846,   Bohn, 

222-246. 
Dawson,  G.,   "Biographical  Lectures."      London,   1886,   Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  172-190. 
Tuckerman,   H.   T. ,    "Thoughts   on   the   Poets."      New  York,    1846, 

Francis. 
Scott.  Sir  W.,  "Lives  of  the  Novelists."     New  York,  1872,   Denham, 

210-234. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  "English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. " 

London,  n.  d. ,  Smith,  Elder  &  Co. 

Irving,  W.,  "  Life  of  Goldsmith. "    New  York,  1864,  Putnam. 
Minto,  W.,  "English  Prose  Literature. "     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 

461-473. 

Collier,  W.  F. ,  "History  of  English  Literature."     London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 324-342. 
Jeaffreson,  J.  C.,  "Novels  and  Novelists."     London,    1858,    Hurst  & 

Blackett,  I  :  223-258. 
Macaulay,  T.  B. ,  "Miscellaneous  Works."      New  York,  1880,  Harper, 

I  :  581-628  and  4:  40-55. 


206  GOLDSMITH 

Chalmers,  A.,   "English   Poets."      London,  1810,  C.  Wittingham,  16: 

479-487- 

Bulwer-Lytton,  E.,   "  Miscellaneous  Prose."      London,  1868,  R.  Bent- 
ley,  I  :  49-94- 
Rossetti,  W.   M.,  "  Lives  of  Famous   Poets."     London,    1878,    Moson, 

161-175. 
Gosse,   E.,   "  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature."     New  York, 

1889,  Macmillan,  316 -332  and  344-450. 
Stephen,  L.,   "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."     New  York,  1890, 

Macmillan,  22 :  86-95. 
Brydges,  Sir  S.  E.,  "  Centura  Literaria."     London,  1815,  Longman  & 

Co.,  7 :  334-356. 

Forster,  J. ,  "  Life,  etc. ,  of  Oliver  Goldsmith. "    Leipsic,  1873,  Tauchnitz. 
Howitt,  W.,  "Homes  and  Haunts  of  British   Poets."     London,  1858, 

Bentley,  I  :  286-336. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  "Classic  Tales,"  London,  1806,  Reynell  &  Hunt,  41-80. 
L'Estrange,  A.  G.,   "History  of  the  English   Humourists."     London, 

1878,  Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :  131-140. 
Tuckerman,  B.,  "  History  of  English  Prose  Fiction."     New  York,  1891, 

Putnam,  237-240  and  273. 
Yonge,  C.  D.,  "  Three  Centuries  of  English   Literature."     New  York, 

1889,  Appleton,  59-68. 
Prior,  Jos.,  "Life  of  Oliver  Goldsmith."     London,  1838,  J.  Murray,  2 

vols. 
Allibone,  S.  A.,  "Dictionary  of  Authors."      Philadelphia,  1858,  Childs 

&  Peters,  I  :  687-696. 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  6,  267-274  (Tuckerman). 
Quarterly  Review,  95  :  394-448. 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  67:   296-308  and  137-153  and  297-309  (W.  Ir- 
ving). 
North   American  Review,   70:  265-289  (C.  M.  Kirkman) ;  45:  91-116 

(Channing). 

Edinburgh  Review,  65  :  108-129  (W.  Empson). 
American  Whig  Review ,  10:  498-513  (J.  D.  W.). 
American  Quarterly  Review,  21  :  460-515. 
Museum,  6 :  1-13  (Sir  Walter  Scott). 
Dublin  University  Magazine,  7:  30-54;  83:  438-446  (Fitzpatrick)  ;  88: 

352-368  (R.  B.  Knowles). 
Bentley1  s  Miscellany,  24:  193-199. 
Chambers' s  Journal,  9 :  343-347. 
Monthly  Review,  142:  163-170. 
Biographical  Magazine,  2:  99-120. 


GOLDSMITH  2O/ 

British  Quarterly  Review,  8:  1-25  (John  Forster). 

LittelTs  Living  Age  (from  Sharpens  Magazine},   24  :  337-346  (Frederick 

Lawrence). 

Eclectic  Review,  66  :  27-40  (James  Prior). 
Appleton's  Journal,  n  :  459-462  (S.  M.  Towle). 
Art  Journal,  16:  305-308  and  326-328. 
Christian  Quarterly  Spectator,  10:  18-37  (J.  Prior). 
Portfolio,  6  :  210-225. 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Graceful  Ease. — Goldsmith  is  remarkable  for  the 
way  in  which  he  has  photographed  his  own  traits  and  his  life- 
history  in  all  his  scenes  and  characters.  In  turning  his  pages 
one  feels,  almost,  that  he  is  conversing  with  a  friend.  "  Not 
one  of  us,  however  busy  or  hard,"  says  Thackeray,  "but 
once  or  twice  in  our  lives  has  passed  an  evening  with  him, 
and  undergone  the  charm  of  his  delightful  music.  His  song 
is  fresh  and  beautiful  as  when  first  he  charmed  with  it." 
Goethe,  on  listening  to  a  German  translation  of  "  The  Vicar 
of  Wakefield,"  pronounced  it  "  a  prose  idyl."  Speaking  of 
the  characters  in  this  immortal  story,  William  Black  says, 
"All  is  done  with  such  a  light,  homely  touch  that  one  gets 
familiarly  to  know  these  people  without  being  aware  of  it. " 
De  Quincey  speaks  of  Goldsmith's  ' '  happy  graces  of  style, 
plastic  as  the  air  or  the  surface  of  a  lake  to  the  pure  impulses 
of  nature."  Forsyth  calls  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  "  "as 
sweet  a  picture  as  was  ever  drawn  of  family  life;  "  another 
critic  considers  "  the  sustained  sweetness  of  Goldsmith's  char- 
acter almost  miraculous,"  while  another  exclaims,  "How 
many  a  familiar  truth  has  he  clothed  in  clear  and  graceful 
diction  !  "  This  quality  of  graceful  ease  is  more  easily  felt 
than  defined.  As  one  critic  says,  "There  is  a  charm,  an 
effect,  and  that  we  all  feel ;  and  we  might  almost  as  well  try 
to  produce  as  to  express  it."  It  is  a  matter  of  universal 
wonder  among  the  critics  that,  although  many  of  Goldsmith's 
tastes  are  known  to  have  been  low,,  and  though  he  had  a  life- 


208  GOLDSMITH 

long  fondness  for  vulgar  associations,  both  his  language  and 
his  sentiments  are  marvellously  pure.  "  His  simplicity," 
says  Minto,  "is  an  elegant  simplicity.  He  is  not  homely 
like  Paley  nor  coarse  like  Swift.  The  remarkable  thing  is  his 
combination  of  purity  with  copiousness.  He  is  never  affect- 
edly easy,  never  condescends  to  polite  slang.  The  light  and 
graceful  structure  of  his  sentences  cannot  be  too  much  ad- 
mired. The  strong  points  of  his  intellect  centred  in  his 
power  of  easy  and  graceful  literary  composition."  In  short, 
the  literary  world  has  approved  the  justice  of  Johnson's  esti- 
mate in  the  famous  Latin  sentence  which  the  "Dictator" 
wrote  upon  his  friend's  cenotaph  in  Westminster  Abbey : 
"There  is  hardly  any  form  of  literature  that  he  did  not 
touch;  and  whatever  he  touched  he  adorned."  That  his  ease 
and  grace  were  both  conscious  and  cultivated  appears  from 
one  of  Goldsmith's  remarks.  He  once  wrote,  "To  be  dull 
and  dronish  is  an  encroachment  on  the  prerogative  of  a 
folio." 

"  Even  when  he  is  wrong  as  to  his  facts  or  his  sweeping 
generalizations,  one  is  inclined  to  forgive  him  on  account 
of  the  quaint  gracefulness  and  point  of  his  style. 
Goldsmith  put  an  anxious  finish  into  all  his  better  work ;  per- 
haps that  is  the  secret  of  the  gracefulness  that  is  apparent  in 
every  line.  .  .  .  Goldsmith  was  particularly  happy  in 
writing  bright  and  airy  verses ;  the  grace  and  lightness  of  his 
touch  has  rarely  been  approached." — William  Black. 

"  His  style  was  always  pure  and  easy.  .  .  .  About 
everything  that  he  wrote,  serious  or  sportive,  there  was  a 
certain  natural  grace  and  decorum  hardly  to  be  expected  from 
a  man  a  great  part  of  whose  life  had  been  passed  among 
thieves  and  beggars,  street-walkers  and  merry-andrews." — 
Macaulay. 

"The  exquisite  grace,  the  delicate  choice  of  words,  the 
amiability  of  sentiment,  so  peculiarly  his  own  and  so  well 
suited  to  express  the  simple  beauty  of  his  thoughts,  gave  a 


GOLDSMITH  209 

charm  to  the  work  which  familiarity  can  only  endear.  .  .  . 
As  an  essayist,  he  has  contributed  some  of  the  most  pure  and 
graceful  specimens  of  English  prose  discoverable  in  the  whole 
range  of  literature.  .  .  .  The  fascinating  ease  of  its  flow 
is  the  result  of  long  study  and  careful  revision." — Bayard 
Tuckerman. 

"  While  I  am  prepared  to  condemn  him  by  my  moral 
sense,  and  while  obliged  to  say  that  he  was  not  at  all  respect- 
able, yet  he  had  those  graceful  graciousnesses  and  gracious 
gracefulnesses  which,  in  spite  of  a  sense  of  condemnation, 
make  him,  after  all,  one  of  the  darlings  of  the  human  race." 
—  George  Daw  son. 

"  Goldsmith,  both  in  verse  and  prose,  was  one  of  the  most 
delightful  writers  in  the  language.  His  verse  flowed  like  a 
limpid  stream.  His  ease  is  quite  unconscious.  Everything 
in  him  is  spontaneous,  unstudied,  unaffected." — Hazlitt. 

"  The  admirable  ease  and  grace  of  the  narrative,  as  well  as 
the  pleasing  truth  with  which  the  principal  characters  are  de- 
signed, make  '  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  '  one  of  the  most 
delicious  morsels  of  fictitious  composition  on  which  the  hu- 
man mind  was  ever  employed." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  One  of  the  most  graceful,  gentle-minded,  and  pure  writ- 
ers our  literature  can  boast  of.  ...  His  manners  were 
without  the  refinement  and  good-breeding  which  the  exquisite 
polish  of  his  language  would  lead  us  to  expect." — H.J.  Nicoll. 

"  Where  is  there  now  a  man  who  can  pen  an  essay  with 
such  ease  and  elegance  as  Goldsmith?  " — Samuel  Johnson. 

"  He  writes  as  if  he  were  at  full  leisure  to  make  everything 
perfect,  and  as  serenely  as  if  he  were  indifferent  to  fame  or 
already  secure  in  the  possession  of  it." — Channing. 

"  He  may  be  likened  to  his  own  writings,  which,  with  all 
their  incomparable  grace,  lightness,  elegance,  ingenuousness, 
and  lambent  fire,  have  nothing  deep  or  grand  :  they  charm  ; 
they  do  not  instruct,  they  do  not  inspire — they  are  graceful, 
not  wise. '  '—John  Forster. 


210  GOLDSMITH 

In  the  preface  to  the  first  edition  of  his  "  Citizen  of  the 
World"  Goldsmith  wrote :  "In  the  intimacy  between  my 
author  and  me  he  has  usually  given  me  a  lift  of  his  eastern 
sublimity  and  I  have  sometimes  given  him  return  of  my  col- 
loquial ease. ' ' 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  love  everything  that's  old  :  old  friends,  old  times,  old  man- 
ners, old  books,  old  wine  ;  and,  I  believe,  Dorothy  [taking  her 
hand],  you'll  own  I  have  been  pretty  fond  of  an  old  wife.'' — She 
Stoops  to  Conquer. 

"  The  place  of  our  retreat  was  in  a  little  neighborhood  consist- 
ing of  farmers,  who  tilled  their  own  grounds,  and  were  equal 
strangers  to  opulence  and  poverty.  As  they  had  almost  all  the 
conveniences  of  life  within  themselves,  they  seldom  visited  towns 
or  cities  in  search  of  superfluity.  Remote  from  the  polite,  they 
still  retained  the  primeval  simplicity  of  manners  ;  and  frugal  by 
habit,  they  scarcely  knew  that  temperance  was  a  virtue." — Vicar 
of  Wakefield. 

"  I  could  not  avoid  showing  my  argument  to  my  old  friend  Mr. 
Wilmot  in  the  hopes  of  receiving  his  approbation  ;  but  I  discov- 
ered that  he  was  most  violently  attached  to  the  contrary  opinion, 
and  with  good  reason  ;  for  he  was  at  that  time  actually  courting 
a  fourth  wife." — Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"  I  published  some  tracts  on  the  subject  myself,  which,  as  they 
never  sold,  I  have  the  consolation  of  thinking  were  read  only  by 
the  happy  few."  —  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

2.  Simplicity— Naturalness— Homeliness.—  "  His 

writings  partake  strongly  of  his  character.  Candid  simplicity, 
unaffected  plainness,  are  symptomatic  of  both.  In  comparing 
Goldsmith  with  his  fellow-novelists,  his  unreserved  and  un- 
sophisticated simplicity  strikes  us  at  once.  .  .  .  There 
is  nothing  but  the  simplest  language  conveying  the  simplest 
moral,  evolved  by  the  simplest  agency." — Macaulay. 

"The  characteristic  of  our  author's  poetry  is  a  prevailing 
simplicity,  which  conceals  all  the  artifices  of  versification  ;  but 
it  is  not  confined  to  his  expression  alone,  for  it  pervades 


GOLDSMITH  211 

every  feature  of  the  poem  ['The  Deserted  Village'].  His 
delineation  of  rural  scenery,  his  village  portraits,  his  moral, 
political,  and  classical  allusions,  while  marked  by  singular 
fidelity,  chasteness,  and  elegance,  are  all  chiefly  distinguished 
by  their  pleasing  and  natural  character. "--  H'ijshingfon  Iri'ing. 

"  Goldsmith  is  among  the  simplest  of  our  writers.  .  .  . 
He  resembles  Addison ;  his  simplicity  is  an  elegant  simplic- 
ity."— Minto. 

"In  prose  style,  as  in  poetic,  it  is  noticeable  that  Gold- 
smith has  little  in  common  with  his  great  contemporaries,  with 
their  splendid  bursts  of  rhetoric  and  Latin  pomp  of  speech — 
but  that  he  goes  back  to  the  perfect  plainness  and  simple 
grace  of  the  Queen  Anne  men  :  colloquial  ease  of 

expression,  an  apparent  absence  of  all  effort  or  calculation." 
— Edmund  Gosse. 

"His  'Vicar  of  Wakefield  '  is  a  prose  idyl,  somewhat 
spoilt  by  phrases  too  rhetorical,  but  at  bottom  as  homely  as  a 
Flemish  picture.  Observe  in  Terburg's  or  Mieri's  paintings 
a  woman  at  market  or  a  burgomaster  emptying  his  long  glass 
of  beer ;  their  faces  are  vulgar,  the  ingenuousness  is  comical, 
the  cookery  occupies  the  place  of  honor  ;  yet  these  good  folks 
are  so  peaceful,  so  contented  with  their  small  ordinary  happi- 
ness, that  we  envy  them.  The  impression  left  by  Goldsmith's 
book  is  pretty  much  the  same." — Taine. 

"It  is  not  for  the  plot  that  people  now  read  '  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield.'  .  .  .  Surely  human  nature  must  be  very 
much  the  same  when  this  simple  description  of  a  quiet  Eng- 
lish home  went  straight  to  the  heart  of  nations  in  both  hemi- 
spheres. And  the  wonder  is  that  Goldsmith,  of  all  men, 
should  have  produced  such  a  perfect  picture  of  domestic  life. 
Herder,  again  and  again,  throughout  his  life,  reverted  to  the 
charm  and  delight  with  which  he  had  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  English  '  prose  idyl,'  and  took  it  for  granted  that 
it  was  a  real  picture  of  English  life.  .  .  ." — William 
Black. 


212  GOLDSMITH 

"  'And  now,  my  dear  mother,  having  struggled  so  hard  to 
get  back  to  see  you,  I  wonder  you  are  not  more  rejoiced  to 
see  me.'  This  is  one  of  his  immortal  sentences,  which  is 
worth  embalming,  it  is  so  deliciously  simple.  Goldsmith 
was  a  big  baby,  a  baby  to  the  end  of  his  life ;  but,  remember, 
he  was  only  half-baked ;  the  reasonable  side  of  his  nature  was 
never  developed  ;  he  died  before  he  had  a  chance  of  cutting 
his  wisdom-teeth;  he  never  did  cut  them,  and  he  would  have 
had  to  live  to  the  age  of  Methuselah  before  he  cut  them. 
[The  picture  of  the  party  at  Vauxhall  in  the  third  of 
'  the  Beau  Tibbs'  series]  is  as  fresh  in  its  fidelity  to  human  nat- 
ure and  as  externally  effective  in  its  artistic  oppositions  as  any 
of  the  best  efforts  of  the  great  masters  of  fiction.  .  . 
He  was  in  reality  of  so  open  and  unguarded  a  disposition  and 
so  wholly  incapable  of  any  conventional  concealment  of  his 
thoughts  and  affections,  that  in  collecting  anecdotes  to  illus- 
trate his  characters  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  ascertain 
whether  the  narrator  is  a  friend  or  an  enemy." — George  Daw- 
son. 

"  He  gives  us  pictures  of  home  and  rural  life  which  denote 
an  exquisite  sense  of  their  charms  and  an  exact  knowledge  of 
their  petty  troubles.  .  .  .  Our  minds  are  exercised,  but 
without  the  least  effort ;  we  get  at  the  full  meaning  without 
seeking  for  it." — W.  E.  Channing. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  You  may  be  as  neat  as  you  please  and  I  shall  love  you  the 
better  for  it ;  but  all  this  is  not  neatness  but  frippery.  These 
rufflings  and  pinkings  and  patchings  will  only  make  us  hated  by 
all  the  wives  of  our  neighbors."—  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"  Every  man  who  has  seen  the  world  and  has  had  his  ups  and 
downs  in  life,  as  the  expression  is,  must  have  frequently  expe- 
rienced the  truth  of  this  doctrine  ;  and  must  know  that  to  have 
much  or  to  seem  to  have  it  is  the  only  way  to  have  more." 
— Essays. 


GOLDSMITH  213 

"  My  house  consisted  of  but  one  story,  and  was  covered  with 
thatch,  which  gave  it  an  air  of  great  snugness  ;  the  walls  on  the 
inside  were  nicely  whitewashed,  and  my  daughters  undertook 
to  adorn  them  with  pictures  of  their  own  designing.  Though 
the  same  room  served  us  for  a  parlor  and  kitchen,  that  only 
made  it  the  warmer.  Besides,  as  it  was  kept  in  the  utmost  neat- 
ness, the  dishes,  plates,  and  coppers  being  well  scoured  and 
all  disposed  in  bright  rows  on  the  shelves,  the  eye  was  agree- 
ably relieved,  and  did  not  want  rich  furniture. "—Vicar  of 
Wakefield. 

3.  Broad  Sympathy — Love  of  Humanity. — It  is 

this  quality,  above  all  others,  that  makes  Goldsmith,  as 
Thackeray  justly  calls  him,  "  the  most  beloved  of  English 
writers."  He  is  essentially  a  sympathetic  writer.  De  Qnin- 
cey  finely  calls  this  trait  in  Goldsmith's  style  "  that  exquisite 
truth  of  household  pathos  "  which  causes  the  genial  Irishman 
to  be  "  remembered  among  men  by  tears  of  tenderness."  Of 
that  delicate  pathos  which  lies  half-way  between  smiles  and 
tears  Goldsmith  was  a  consummate  master.  Thackeray  at- 
tributes the  charm  of  his  style  to  "  his  sweet  regrets,  his  del- 
icate compassion,  his  soft  smile,  his  tremulous  sympathy,  the 
weakness  which  he  owns,"  and  adds:  "  Think  of  him,  reck- 
less, thriftless,  vain  if  you  like,  but  merciful,  gentle,  generous, 
full  of  love  and  pity.  Wander  he  must ;  but  he  carries  a 
home-relic  with  him,  and  dies  with  it  on  his  breast."  Per- 
haps the  most  characteristic  adjective  to  be  applied  to  Gold- 
smith is  good-natured.  Giles  calls  this  good-nature  "  a  copi- 
ous fountain  of  kindness,  refreshing  the  life  around  him  with 
streams  of  gayety,  of  fondness,  and  of  pity.  There  was  a  be- 
nignity in  him  which  gave  his  heart  an  interest  in  the  hum- 
blest creature."  As  compared  with  the  pathos  of  Sterne, 
Minto  nicely  observes  that  Goldsmith's  "benevolence  was 
more  active  than  sentimental,  just  as  Sterne's  was  more  senti- 
mental than  active."  A  critic  in  the  North  American  Re- 
view is  right  when  he  declares  that  "it  is  to  this  wealth 


214  GOLDSMITH 

of  sympathy  that  Goldsmith's  writings  owe  their  immor- 
tality." 

1 '  It  is  not  to  be  described — the  effect  which  Goldsmith's 
'  Vicar  of  Wakefield  '  had  upon  me  just  at  the  critical  mo- 
ment of  my  mental  development.  That  lofty  and  benevolent 
irony,  that  fair  and  indulgent  view  of  all  infirmities  and  faults, 
that  meekness  under  all  calamities,  that  equanimity  under  all 
changes  and  chances,  .  .  .  proved  my  best  education." 
—  Goethe. 

"  Not  a  little  of  the  peculiar  charm  of  Goldsmith  is  attrib- 
utable to  the  excellence  of  his  heart.  Mere  talent  would 
scarcely  have  sufficed  to  interpret  and  display  so  enchantingly 
the  humble  characters  and  scenes  to  which  his  most  brilliant 
efforts  were  devoted.  It  was  his  sincere  and  ready  sympathy 
with  man,  his  sensibility  to  suffering  in  every  form,  his  strong 
social  sentiment,  and  his  amiable  interest  in  all  around  him 
which  brightened  to  his  mind's  eye  what  to  the  less  suscep- 
tible is  unheeded  and  obscure." — Bayard  Tuckerman. 

11  He  learned  to  regard  '  the  human  face  divine'  with  af- 
fection and  esteem.  .  .  .  He  was  ready  to  do  anything 
— Jack-of-all-trades,  master  of  none — until,  by-and-by,  he 
became  master  of  the  human  heart  and  writer  of  two  or  three 
of  the  deepest,  truest,  sweetest  things  men  ever  have  written. 
.  .  .  In  all  literature  I  know  of  no  such  touch  of  that 
heavenly  charity  which  Christians  praise  so  much  and  know  so 
little  as  where  Dr.  Primrose,  on  finding  that  his  daughter  has 
been  seduced,  curses  the  seducer,  and  Moses  with  loving  sim- 
plicity rebukes  his  father.  The  old  man  replies,  '  Did  I  curse 
him,  child?  then  may  heaven  forgive  me  and  him.'  .  .  . 
High  animal  spirits,  careless  nature,  readiness  to  give  and  re- 
ceive, gushing  tenderness — these  were  his  virtues,  and  they  are 
always  popular.  .  .  .  I  for  one  am  glad  that  God  sent 
Oliver  Goldsmith  into  the  world  to  teach,  as  he  has  done  by 
his  life  and  writings,  that  mercy,  charity,  and  slowness  to 
anger  which,  through  all  his  sad,  mean,  and  miserable  life  he 


GOLDSMITH  21 5 

never  failed  to  show.  ...  If  Goldsmith's  precepts  leave 
us  languid,  his  charming  topography  and  his  graceful  mem- 
ories, his  tender  retrospect  and  his  genial  sympathy  with  hu- 
manity still  invite  and  detain  us.  ...  Its  ['  The  Vicar 
of  Wakefield's ']  sweet  humanity,  its  wisdom  and  its  common 
sense,  its  happy  mingling  of  character  and  Christianity,  will 
keep  it  sweet  long  after  more  ambitious  and  in  many  respects 
abler  works  are  forgotten." — George  Dawson. 

'•  His  benevolent  spirit  seems  still  to  smile  on  us  :  to  suc- 
cor with  sweet  charity;  to  soothe,  caress,  and  forgive;  to 
plead  with  the  fortunate  for  the  unhappy  and  the  poor." — 
Thackeray. 

"  But  the  children  of  flesh,  whose  pulses  beat  too  sympa- 
thetically, cannot  sequester  themselves  in  that  way  [as  Milton 
did].  They  walk  in  no  such  altitudes,  but  at  elevations  eas- 
ily reached  by  the  ground-winds  of  humble  calamity.  And 
from  that  cup  of  sorrow  which  upon  all  lips  is  pressed  in 
some  proportion,  they  must  submit,  by  the  very  terms  on 
which  they  hold  their  gifts,  to  drink,  if  not  more  profoundly 
than  others,  yet  more  perilously  as  regards  the  fulfilment  of 
their  intellectual  mission.  Among  this  household  of  chil- 
dren, too  sympathetically  linked  to  the  trembling  impulses 
of  earth,  stands  forward  conspicuously  Oliver  Goldsmith." 
— De  Quincey. 

"We  read  'The  Vicar  of  Wakefield '  in  youth  and  in 
age — we  return  to  it  again  and  again,  and  bless  the  memory 
of  an  author  who  contrives  to  reconcile  us  to  human  nature." 
—Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  The  secret  of  its  ['The  Vicar  of  Wakefield's  ']  endur- 
ing popularity  is  undoubtedly  its  truth  to  nature,  but  to  nat- 
ure of  the  most  amiable  kind,  to  nature  as  Goldsmith  saw 
it." — Washington  Irving. 

"  His  charity  seems  to  have  been  pushed  beyond  the  lim- 
its of  prudence,  and  all  who  knew  him  testify  to  the  singular 
kindliness  of  his  nature." — Leslie  Stephen. 


2l6  GOLDSMITH 

"  He  was  so  generous  that  he  quite  forgot  to  be  just." — 
Macaulay. 

"  He  was  kind  and  benevolent  whenever  he  had  it  in  his 
power ;  and  although  frequently  duped  by  artful  men,  his 
heart  was  never  hardened  against  the  application  of  the  un- 
happy. ' '  — Dr.  Chalmers. 

"  He  had  in  himself  an  original  to  draw  from,  with  pre- 
cisely those  qualities  which  win  general  affection.  Lovable 
himself,  in  spite  of  all  his  grave  faults,  he  makes  lovable  the 
various  copies  that  he  takes  from  the  master-portrait.  He  is 
precisely  what  Johnson  calls  him,  the  '  affectum  lenis  domina- 
tor' — potens  because  lenis.  He  is  never  above  the  height  of 
the  humblest  understanding ;  and,  by  touching  the  human 
heart,  he  raises  himself  to  a  level  with  the  loftiest." — Bulwer- 
Lytton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  While  the  slightest  inconveniences  of  the  great  are  magnified 
into  calamities  ;  while  tragedy  mouths  out  their  sufferings  in  all 
the  strains  of  eloquence,  the  miseries  of  the  poor  are  entirely  dis- 
regarded ;  and  yet  some  of  the  lower  ranks  of  people  undergo 
more  real  hardships  in  one  day  than  those  of  a  more  exalted  sta- 
tion suffer  in  their  whole  lives.  It  is  inconceivable  what  diffi- 
culties the  meanest  of  our  common  sailors  and  soldiers  endure 
without  murmuring  or  regret ;  without  passionately  declaiming 
against  Providence  or  calling  their  fellows  to  be  gazers  on  their 
intrepidity.  Every  day  to  them  is  a  day  of  misery,  and  yet  they 
entertain  their  hard  fate  without  repining." — Essays. 

"  '  Excuse  me  ! '  returned  I  ;  '  these  people,  however  fallen, 
are  still  men,  and  that  is  a  very  good  title  to  my  affections.  .  .  . 
If  these  wretches,  my  children,  were  princes,  there  would  be 
thousands  ready  to  offer  their  ministry  ;  but,  in  my  opinion,  the 
heart  that  is  buried  in  a  dungeon  is  as  precious  as  that  seated 
upon  a  throne.'  " —  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"  Were  I  to  be  angry  at  men  for  being  fools,  I  could  find  am- 
ple room  for  declamation,  but  alas  !  I  have  been  a  fool  myself; 
and  why  should  I  be  angry  with  them  for  being  something 


GOLDSMITH  217 

so  natural  to  every  child   of  humanity  ?" — Description  of  Va- 
rious Clubs. 


4.  Pleasantry— Mild  Irony.— Goldsmith  is  a  master 
of  humor  as  well  as  of  wit.  His  pleasantry  generally  takes 
the  form  of  playful,  sympathetic  irony,  though  we  have  fre- 
quent illustrations  of  pure  humor  of  the  slyest  kind.  He 
revels  in  what  De  Quincey  calls  "  happy  laughter  untainted 
with  malice."  A  writer  in  the  North  American  Review  de- 
fines this  characteristic  as  "  the  same  unobtrusive,  ever-vary- 
ing humor,  seen  equally  in  deeds,  words,  characters,  and 
situations,  calling  for  no  sagacity  in  us  to  catch  it,  and  pro- 
ducing no  surprise."  Another  critic  calls  it  "  sweetened  wis- 
dom, sympathetic  satire,  unvenomed  humor."'  "Whom," 
asks  Thackeray,  "did  the  vagrant  harper  ever  hurt?  he  car- 
ries no  weapon  save  the  harp  on  which  he  plays  to  you." 

"Goldsmith  is  the  most  amiable  of  our  satirists.  He  was 
full  of  the  milk  of  human  kindness,  and  the  range  of  his  sym- 
pathies was  wide.  His  ridicule  is  always  on  the  side  of  good 
sense  and  good  feeling,  and  he  handles  even  his  embodiments 
of  folly  and  weakness  '  tenderly,  as  if  he  loved  them  ;  '  as  if, 
at  least,  he  had  a  lurking  toleration  for  them  and  secretly 
recognized  their  claims  to  exist  in  their  own  way  as  varieties 
of  multiform  humanity. " — Minto. 

"  The  vices  and  follies  of  the  day  are  touched  with  the 
most  playful  and  diverting  satire.  .  .  .  He  softens  caus- 
tic satire  with  a  pleasant  humor.  .  .  .  He  drew  human 
nature  as  he  found  it,  with  the  freedom  of  a  satirist,  but  never 
with  the  coldness  of  a  cynic.  .  .  .  No  one  ever  excelled 
so  much  as  he  in  depicting  amiable  follies  and  endearing 
weaknesses.  His  satire  makes  us  at  once  smile  and  love  all 
that  he  so  tenderly  ridicules." — Talfourd. 

"The  whimsical  yet  amiable  views  of  human  life  and  hu- 
man nature ;  the  mellow,  unforced  humor  blended  so  happily 
with  good  feeling  and  good  sense  throughout  his  writings  win 


2l8  GOLDSMITH 

their  way  irresistibly  to  the  affections  and  carry  the  author 
with  them.  What  a  bland,  gentle,  loving  humor  it  is  which 
occasionally  steals  over  the  picture  of  '  The  Deserted  Vil- 
lage,1 giving  here  and  there  charming  touches  of  gay  sunshine 
breaking  out  upon  the  several  points 'of  a  shaded  landscape, 
yet  never  disturbing  the  sweet  serenity  and  sadness  of  the 
whole  !  Never  did  humor  wear  so  gentle  an  aspect.  .  .  . 
That  which  constitutes  the  greatest  charm  [of  '  The  Citizen  of 
the  World']  is  the  subdued  and  chastened  satire  one  occa- 
sionally meets  with.  Not  a  rude  and  boisterous,  a  cutting  and 
malicious  satire,  but  such  as  requires  to  be  read  with  some 
attention  before  the  full  force  of  its  sly  innuendoes  is  fully  per- 
ceived. " — Washington  Irving. 

"Look  ye  now,  for  one  moment,  at  the  deep  and  delicate 
humor  of  Goldsmith.  How  at  his  touch  the  venial  infirmities 
and  vanity  of  this  good  Vicar  of  Wakefield  live  lovingly  be- 
fore the  mind's  eye !  How  we  sympathize  with  poor  Moses 
in  that  deep  trade  of  his  for  the  green  spectacles  !  How  all 
our  good  wishes  for  aspiring  rusticity  thrill  for  the  showman 
who  would  let  his  bear  dance  only  to  the  genteelest  tunes  !  " 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

11  The  charm  of  the  strictures  of  '  The  Citizen  of  the  World  ' 
lies  wholly  in  their  delicate  satire.  ...  At  the  same 
time  it  must  be  allowed  that  the  utterance  of  these  strictures 
through  the  mouth  of  a  Chinese  admits  of  a  certain  naivete 
which,  on  occasion,  heightens  the  sarcasm.  .  .  .  The 
fine  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  lived  in  that  atmosphere  of 
scandal  and  intrigue  and  gambling  are  also  from  time  to  time 
treated  to  a  little  decorous  and  respectful  raillery." — William 
Black. 

"  With  his  comic  sagacity  and  his  genial  perception  of  the 
ludicrous,  no  writer  can  give  more  amusing  pictures  than  he 
does  of  sordid  follies.  .  .  .  He  drew  human  nature  as  he 
found  it,  with  the  freedom  of  a  satirist,  bat  never  with  the 
coldness  of  a  cynic." — H.  Giles. 


GOLDSMITH  219 

"Such  of  his  juvenile  letters  as  have  been  preserved  show 
that  he  possessed  at  an  early  age  that  charm  of  style  and  fe- 
licity of  humorous  description  that  afterward  delighted  the 
world.  .  .  .  His  criticisms  on  the  reigning  modes  of 
the  time  show  wonderful  powers  of  humor  and  gentle  satire." 
— H.  J.  Nicoll. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  had  scarcely  taken  orders  a  year  before  I  began  to  think 
seriously  of  matrimony,  and  chose  my  wife  as  she  did  her  wed- 
ding-gown, not  for  a  fine  glossy  surface,  but  for  such  qualities  as 
would  wear  well.  To  do  her  justice,  she  was  a  good-natured, 
notable  woman  ;  and  as  for  breeding,  there  were  few  country 
ladies  who  could  show  more.  She  could  read  any  English  book 
without  much  spelling  ;  but  for  pickling,  preserving,  and  cook- 
ery, none  could  excel  her." — Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"I  even  went  a  step  beyond  Whiston  in  displaying  my  prin- 
ciples :  as  he  had  engraven  on  his  wife's  tomb  that  she  was  the 
only  wife  of  William  Whiston,  so  I  wrote  a  similar  epitaph  for 
my  wife,  though  still  living,  in  which  I  extolled  her  prudence, 
economy,  and  obedience  till  death  ;  and  having  got  it  copied 
fair,  with  an  elegant  frame,  it  was  placed  over  the  chimney-piece, 
where  it  answered  several  useful  purposes.  It  admonished  my 
wife  of  her  duty  to  me  and  my  fidelity  to  her  ;  it  inspired  her 
with  a  passion  for  fame,  and  constantly  put  her  in  mind  of  her 
end."—  Vicar  of  Wakffield. 

"  My  wife  and  daughters  happening  to  return  a  visit  to  neigh- 
bors, found  that  the  family  had  lately  got  their  pictures  drawn  by 
a  limner,  who  travelled  the  country,  and  took  likenesses  for  fif- 
teen shillings  the  head.  As  this  family  and  ours  had  long  a  sort 
of  rivalry  in  point  of  taste,  our  spirit  took  the  alarm  at  this  stolen 
march  upon  us,  and  notwithstanding  all  I  could  say,  and  I  said 
much,  it  was  resolved  we  should  have  our  pictures  done  too. 
Having,  therefore,  engaged  the  limner  (for  what  could  I  do?)  our 
next  deliberation  was,  to  show  the  superiority  of  our  tastes  in  the 
attitudes.  As  for  our  neighbor's  family,  there  were  seven  of 
them,  and  they  were  drawn  with  seven  oranges,  a  thing  quite  out 
of  taste,  no  variety  in  life,  no  composition  in  the  world.  We  de- 
sired to  have  something  in  a  brighter  style,  and  after  many  de- 


22O  GOLDSMITH 

bates,  at  length  came  to  an  unanimous  resolution  of  being  drawn 
together  in  one  large  historical  family  piece.  This  would  be 
cheaper,  since  one  frame  should  serve  for  all,  and  it  would  be  in- 
finitely more  genteel ;  for  all  families  of  any  taste  were  drawn  in 
the  same  manner.  As  we  did  not  immediately  recollect  an  his- 
torical subject  to  hit  us,  we  were  contented  each  with  being 
drawn  as  independent  historical  figures.  My  wife  desired  to  be 
represented  as  Venus,  and  the  painter  was  desired  not  to  be  too 
frugal  of  his  diamonds  in  her  stomacher  and  hair.  Her  two  little 
ones  were  to  be  as  Cupids  by  her  side,  while  I,  in  my  gown  and 
band,  was  to  present  her  with  my  books  on  the  Whistonian  con- 
troversy. Olivia  would  be  drawn  as  an  Amazon  sitting  upon  a 
bank  of  flowers,  dressed  in  a  green  Joseph,  richly  laced  with  gold, 
and  a  whip  in  her  hand.  Sophia  was  to  be  a  shepherdess,  with 
as  many  sheep  as  the  painter  could  put  in  for  nothing  ;  and  Moses 
was  to  be  dressed  out  with  a  hat  and  white  feather." —  Vicar  of 
Wakefield. 

5.  Power  of  Portraiture— Fidelity. —  "They  [the 
'  Chinese  Letters ']  contain  many  descriptions  of  character, 
which,  if  surpassed  by  himself,  were  surpassed  by  no  other 
writer  of  the  time." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  There  is  as  much  human  nature  in  the  character  of  the 
Vicar  alone  as  would  have  furnished  any  fifty  of  the  novels  of 
that  day  or  of  this.  Who  has  not  been  charmed  by  his  sly 
and  quaint  humor,  by  his  moral  dignity  and  simple  vanities, 
even  by  the  little  secrets  he  reveals  to  us  of  his  paternal  rule? 
It  is  of  little  consequence  whether  we  say  that  Au- 
burn is  an  English  village  or  insist  that  it  is  only  Lissoy  ideal- 
ized, as  long  as  the  thing  is  true  in  itself.  And  we  know  that 
this  is  true  :  it  is  not  that  one  sees  the  place  as  a  picture,  but 
that  one  seems  to  be  breathing  its  very  atmosphere  and  listen- 
ing to  the  various  cries  that  thrill  the  '  hollow  silence.'  .  .  . 
Again  and  again  there  are  recurrent  strokes  of  such  vividness 
and  naturalness  that  we  yield  altogether  to  the  necromancer. 
Look  at  this  perfect  picture — of  human  emotion  and  outside 
nature — put  in  a,. few  sentences.  The  old  clergyman,  after  be- 


GOLDSMITH  221 

ing  in  search  of  his  daughter,  has  found  her,  and  is  now — hav- 
ing left  her  in  an  inn — returning  to  his  family  and  his  home. 
'  As  I  walked  but  slowly,  the  night  waned  apace.  The  labor- 
ers of  the  day  were  all  retired  to  rest ;  the  lights  were  out  in 
every  cottage ;  no  sounds  were  heard  but  of  the  shrilling  cock 
and  the  deep-mouthed  watch-dog  at  hollow  distance. '  What 
more  perfect  description  of  the  stillness  of  night  was  ever 
given  ?  "—William  Black. 

"  Within  a  small  compass  he  drew  with  a  singularly  easy 
and  vigorous  pencil  the  characters  of  nine  or  ten  of  his  inti- 
mate associates." — Macaulay. 

"  His  talent  for  fresh  and  vivid  delineation  is  ever  most 
prominently  displayed  when  he  is  describing  what  he  actually 
witnessed." — Bayard  Tuckerman. 

"  Few  works  exhibit  a  nicer  perception  or  more  delicate 
delineation  of  life  and  manners  [than  '  The  Citizen  of  the 
World '],  .  .  .  and  English  characteristics  in  endless 
variety  are  hit  off  with  the  pencil  of  a  master.  .  .  .  Fic- 
tion, in  poetry,  is  not  the  reverse  of  truth,  but  her  soft  and 
enchanted  resemblance ;  and  this  ideal  beauty  of  nature  has 
been  seldom  united  with  so  much  sober  fidelity  as  in  the 
groups  and  scenery  of  '  The  Deserted  Village.'  " — Thomas 
Campbell. 

"  The  elements  of  the  Vicar's  character  are  certainly  very 
common.  We  recognize  an  old  acquaintance,  and  no  study 
or  ingenuity  can  make  him  anything  else  than  what  he  ap- 
pears to  plain  men  at  the  first  reading.  It  is  needless  to  add 
that,  in  spite  of  this,  or  in  consequence  of  it,  it  is  known  all 
over  the  world  as  a  master-work  of  genius.  .  .  .  He 
shows  the  irksomeness  of  the  company  of  fools  in  his  sketches 
of  that  matchless  compound  of  superficiality,  pretension, 
tawdriness,  and  self-content,  the  little  second-rate  beau,  Mr. 
Tibbs."—  W.  E.  Channing. 

"  There  is  a  strong  personal  resemblance  in  all  his  charac- 
ters ;  they  are  portraits  of  himself  drawn  with  the  features 


222  GOLDSMITH 

widened  into  broad  humor  or  elongated  into  saturnine  wisdom. 
His  Beau  Tibbs  seems  to  have  been  created  by  looking  at 
and  magnifying  some  of  his  own  foibles  ;  his  Dr.  Primrose  by 
drawing  forth  those  grave  and  kindly  feelings  which,  not- 
withstanding those  foibles,  lay,  he  knew,  at  the  bottom  of  his 
heart. ' ' —  Washington  Irving. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"At  a  small  distance  from  the  house  my  predecessor  had  made 
a  seat,  overshadowed  by  a  hedge  of  hawthorne  and  honeysuckle. 
There,  when  the  weather  was  fine  and  our  labor  soon  finished, 
we  usually  sat  together,  to  enjoy  an  extensive  landscape  in  the 
calm  of  the  evening.  There  too  we  drank  tea,  which  was  now 
become  an  occasional  banquet,  and  as  we  had  it  but  seldom  it 
diffused  a  new  joy,  the  preparations  for  it  being  made  with  no 
small  share  of  bustle  and  ceremony.  On  these  occasions  our  two 
little  ones  always  read  to  us,  and  they  were  regularly  served  after 
we  were  done.  Sometimes  to  give  variety  to  our  amusements 
the  girls  sang  to  the  guitar,  and  while  they  thus  formed  a  little 
concert,  my  wife  and  I  would  stroll  down  the  sloping  field,  that 
was  embellished  with  blue-bells  and  century,  talk  of  our  children 
with  rapture,  and  enjoy  the  breeze  that  wafted  both  health  and 
harmony." — Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"During  the  reply  I  had  the  opportunity  of  observing  the 
appearance  of  our  new  companion  ;  his  hat  was  pinched  up  with 
peculiar  smartness  ;  his  looks  were  pale,  thin  and  sharp ;  round 
his  neck  he  wore  a  broad  black  ribbon  and  in  his  bosom  a  buckle 
studded  with  glass  ;  his  coat  was  trimmed  with  tarnished  twist  ; 
he  wore  by  his  side  a  sword  with  a  black  hilt ;  and  his  stockings 
of  silk,  though  newly  washed,  were  grown  yellow  with  long  ser- 
vice."— A  Citizen  of  the  World. 

"  Our  little  habitation  was  situated  at  the  foot  of  a  sloping  hill, 
sheltered  with  a  beautiful  underwood  behind  and  a  prattling  riv- 
er before  ;  on  one  side  a  meadow,  on  the  other  a  green.  My 
farm  consisted  of  about  twenty  acres  of  excellent  land,  I  having 
given  a  hundred  pounds  for  my  predecessor's  good-will.  Noth- 
ing could  exceed  the  neatness  of  my  little  enclosures  ;  the  elms 
and  hedge-rows  appearing  with  inexpressible  beauty.  There 
were  three  other  apartments,  one  for  my  wife  and  me,  another 


GOLDSMITH  223 

for  our  two  daughters,  within  our  own,  and  the  third,  with  two 
oeds,  for  the  rest  of  the  children." —  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

6.  Delicate  Pathos. — "  Goldsmith  is  a  master  of  pathos, 
exquisite  of  its  kind.  It  is  the  pathos  intimately  allied  to  hu- 
mor and  touching  upon  the  tears  that  lie  nearest  to  our  smiles. 
The  humor  that  draws  tears,  and  the  pathos  that  provokes  smiles, 
will  be  popular  to  the  end  of  the  world." — Bulwer-Lytton. 

"The  very  first  line  of  the  poem  ['  The  Traveller']  strikes  a 
key-note — there  is  in  it  a  pathetic  thrill  of  distance  and  re- 
gret and  longing.  .  .  .  The  genuine  and  tender  pathos 
[of  his  works]  never  at  any  time  verges  on  the  affected  or 
theatrical. ' '—  William  Black. 

"  He  can  be  commended  for  the  elegance  of  his  imagery, 
the  depth  of  his  pathos,  and  the  flow  of  his  numbers.  He  is 
uniformly  tender  and  impressive,  but  rarely  sublime.  Of  the 
entire  poem  ['  The  Deserted  Village ']  it  may  be  deliberately 
said  that  it  has  more  tenderness  and  pathos,  gives  more  of 
picture  to  the  eye  and  of  feeling  to  the  heart,  than  any  other 
in  the  language  which  is  written  in  the  same  verse  or  metre." 
—  Washington  Irving. 

"  There  is  true  pathos  in  that  tender  lament  ['  The  Deserted 
Village  ']  over  the  superseded  sports  and  ruined  haunts  of  rus- 
tic enjoyment,  which  never  fails  to  find  a  response  in  every 
feeling  breast.  It  is  an  elaborate  and  touching  epitaph,  writ- 
ten in  the  cemetery  of  the  world  over  what  is  dear  to  all  hu- 
manity. " — Bayard  Tuckerman. 

"  His  poems  and  his  novel  contain  some  of  the  very  finest 
touches  of  pathos. ' ' — Minto. 

"That  unfeigned  compassion  for  the  miseries  of  his  kind 
with  which  he  walked  the  London  streets." — Austin  Dobson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  old  man's  passion  for  confinement  is  similar  to  that  we 
all  have  for  life.  Vre  are  habituated  to  the  prison,  we  look 


224  GOLDSMITH 

round  with  discontent,  are  displeased  with  the  abode,  and  yet 
the  length  of  our  captivity  only  increases  our  fondness  for  the 
cell.  The  trees  we  have  planted,  the  houses  we  have  built,  or 
the  posterity  we  have  begotten,  all  serve  to  bind  us  closer  to 
earth,  and  embitter  our  parting." — A  Citizen  of  the  World. 

"Then  let  us  take  comfort  now,  for  we  shall  soon  be  at  our 
journey's  end ;  we  shall  soon  lay  down  the  heavy  burthen  laid  by 
Heaven  upon  us  ;  and  though  death,  the  only  friend  of  the 
wretched,  for  a  little  while  mocks  the  weary  traveller  with  the 
view,  and  like  the  horizon  still  flies  before  him,  yet  the  time  will 
certainly  and  shortly  come  when  we  shall  cease  from  our  toil  ; 
when  the  luxuriant  great  ones  of  the  world  shal)  no  more  tread 
us  to  the  earth." — Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"  But  who  are  these  who  make  the  streets  their  couch,  and 
find  a  short  repose  from  wretchedness  at  the  doors  of  the  opu- 
lent ?  These  are  strangers,  wanderers,  and  orphans,  whose  cir- 
cumstances are  too  humble  to  expect  redress,  and  whose  dis- 
tresses are  too  great  even  for  pity.  Their  wretchedness  excites 
rather  horror  than  pity.  Some  are  without  the  covering  even  of 
rags  and  others  emaciated  with  disease  :  the  world  has  disclaimed 
them  ;  society  turns  its  back  upon  their  distress,  and  has  given 
them  up  to  nakedness  and  hunger." — A  City  Night  Piece, 

"  Life  at  the  greatest  and  best  is  but  a  forward  child,  that  must 
be  humoured  and  coaxed  a  little  till  it  falls  asleep,  and  then  all 
the  care  is  over." — The  Good-Natured  Man. 

7.  Cheerfulness— Optimism. — "He  had  a  constitu- 
tional gayety  of  heart,  an  elastic  hilarity  and,  as  he  himself 
expresses  it,  '  a  knack  of  hoping  ' — which  knack  could  not  be 
bought  with  Ormus  and  with  Ind  nor  lured  for  a  day  with  the 
peacock-throne  of  Delhi." — De  Quinccy. 

"  The  cheerfulness  which  shines  like  sunlight  through  Gold- 
smith's writings  did  not  altogether  desert  him  even  in  the 
most  trying  hours  of  his  wayward  and  troubled  career.  He 
had,  with  all  his  sensitiveness,  a  fine,  happy-go-lucky  disposi- 
tion ;  was  ready  for  a  frolic  when  he  had  a  guinea  and  when 
he  had  none,  and  could  turn  a  sentence  on  the  humorous  side 
of  starvation. ' ' —  William  Black. 


GOLDSMITH  22§ 

"  His  constant  cheerfulness  under  all  circumstances  was  the 
wonderful  thing  about  him.  .  .  .  He  lived  in  the  sun- 
shine." —  George  Dawson. 

"  Not  in  those  graces  of  style  nor  in  that  homely,  cherished 
gallery  of  familiar  faces  can  the  secret  of  its  [Goldsmith's 
style's]  extraordinary  fascination  be  said  to  consist.  It  lies 
nearer  the  heart — a  something  which  has  found  its  way  there ; 
which,  while  it  amused,  has  made  us  happier;  which,  gently 
interweaving  itself  with  our  habits  of  thought,  has  increased 
our  good  humor  and  charity  ;  which,  insensibly  it  may  be,  has 
corrected  wilful  impatiences  of  temper  and  made  the  world's 
daily  accidents  easier  and  kinder  to  us  all ;  somewhat  thus 
should  be  expressed,  I  think,  the  charm  of  '  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield.'  "—John  Forster. 

"  The  artless  benevolence  that  beams  throughout  his  works ; 
the  whimsical  yet  amiable  views  of  human  life  and  human 
nature  ;  the  enforced  humor,  blending  so  happily  with  good 
feeling  and  good  sense,  and  singularly  dashed  at  times  with  a 
pleasing  melancholy  ;  even  the  very  nature  of  his  mellow  and 
flowing  and  softly  tinted  style — all  seem  to  bespeak  his  moral 
as  well  as  his  intellectual  qualities,  and  make  us  love  the  man 
at  the  same  time  that  we  admire  the  author.  .  .  .  [His 
writings]  put  us  in  good  humor  with  ourselves  and  with  the 
world,  and  in  so  doing  they  make  us  happier  and  better  men." 
—  Washington  Irving. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  All  that  the  wisdom  of  the  proud  can  teach  is  to  be  stubborn 
or  sullen  under  misfortunes.  The  Cardinal's  example  will  in- 
struct us  to  be  merry  in  circumstances  of  the  highest  affliction. 
It  matters  not  whether  our  good  humour  be  construed  by  others 
into  insensibility  or  even  idiotism  ;  it  is  happiness  to  ourselves, 
and  none  but  a  fool  would  measure  his  satisfaction  by  what  the 
world  thinks  of  it  ;  for  my  own  part,  I  never  pass  by  one  of  our 
prisons  for  debt  that  I  do  not  envy  that  felicity  which  is  still  go- 


226  GOLDSMITH 

ing  forward  among  those  people  who  forget  the  cares  of  the 
world  by  being  shut  out  from  its  ambition." — Essays. 

"  As  for  my  misfortunes,  master,  I  can't  pretend  to  have  gone 
through  any  more  than  other  folks ;  for,  except  the  loss  of  my 
limb  and  my  being  obliged  to  beg,  I  don't  know  any  reason, 
thank  heaven,  that  I  have  to  complain.  There  is  Bill  Thibbs,  of 
our  regiment,  he  has  lost  both  his  legs,  and  an  eye  to  boot,  but, 
thank  heaven,  it  is  not  so  bad  with  me  yet." — Essays. 

"  '  There  again  you  are  wrong,  my  dear,'  cried  I,  'for  though 
they  be  copper,  we  will  keep  them  b,y  us,  for  copper  spectacles, 
you  know,  are  better  than  nothing.  .  .  .  But  let  us  have  one 
bottle  more,  Deborah,  my  life,  and  Moses,  give  us  a  good  song. 
What  thanks  do  we  not  owe  to  heaven  for  thus  bestowing  tran- 
quillity, health,  and  competence  !  I  think  myself  happier  now 
than  the  greatest  monarch  upon  earth.  He  has  no  such  fireside, 
no  such  pleasant  faces  about  it.  Yes,  Deborah,  we  are  now 
growing  old  ;  but  the  evening  of  our  life  is  likely  to  be  happy. 
We  are  descended  from  ancestors  that  know  no  stain,  and  we 
shall  leave  a  good  and  virtuous  race  of  children  behind.  While 
we  live  they  will  be  our  support  and  our  pleasure  here,  and  when 
we  die  they  will  transmit  our  honour  untainted  to  posterity.  Come, 
my  son,  we  wait  for  a  song,  let  us  have  a  chorus.'  " — Vicar  of 
Wakefield. 

8.  Wit — Comical  Extravagance. — "  Goldsmith  sur- 
passes all  our  humorists  in  the  combination  of  delicate  wit 
with  extravagant  fun.  His  fancy  was  of  the  lightest  and 
airiest  order,  and  his  volatile  spirit  was  easily  warmed  to  the 
boiling-point  of  comical  extravagance." — Minto. 

"  Fashions  in  dramatic  literature  may  come  and  go  ;  but 
the  wholesome,  good-natured  fun  of  '  She  Stoops  to  Conquer  ' 
is  as  capable  of  producing  a  hearty  laugh  now  as  when  it  first 
saw  the  light  in  Covent  Garden.  .  .  .  Whenever  the 
entertainer  [Goldsmith]  thin-ks  he  is  becoming  dull  [in  his 
essays]  he  suddenly  tells  a  quaint  little  story,  and  walks  off 
amid  the  laughter  he  knows  he  has  produced." — William 
Black. 

"His  comic  writing  is  of  the  class  which  is  perhaps  as 


GOLDSMITH  22J 

much  preferred  to  that  of  a  staider  sort  by  people  in  general 
as  it  is  by  the  writer  of  these  pages — comedy,  running  wit, 
farce.  .  .  .  It  is  that  of  the  prince  of  comic  writers, 
M  ol  i  ere. "  — Leigh  Hunt. 

"  There  is  altogether  ...  an  exuberant  heartiness 
and  breadth  of  genial  humor  in  the  comedy  ['  She  Stoops  to 
Conquer  ']  which  seems  of  right  to  overflow  into  Tony  Lump- 
kin.  He  may  be  farcical,  as  such — lumpish,  roaring,  un- 
couth animal  spirits  have  a  right  to  be  ;  but  who  would  abate 
a  bit  of  Cousin  Tony,  stupid  and  cunning  as  he  is  ;  impu- 
dent yet  sheepish,  with  his  loutish  love  of  low  company  and 
his  young  squire  sense  of  his  '  fortin  ?  '  There  is  never  any 
misgiving  about  Goldsmith's  fun  and  enjoyment.  It  is  not 
obtained  at  the  expense  of  any  better  thing.  .  .  .  Whether 
it  be  enjoyment  or  mischief  going  on  in  one  of  Goldsmith's 
comedies,  the  predominant  impression  is  hearty,  jovial,  and 
sincere." — -John  Forster. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Ah,  there  was  merit  neglected  for  you  !  and  so  true  a  friend  ! 
We  loved  each  other  for  thirty  years,  and  yet  he  never  asked  me 
to  lend  him  a  single  farthing." — The  Good- Natured  Man. 

"  Mixing  with  the  crowd,  I  was  now  conducted  to  the  hall 
where  the  magistrates  are  chosen  ;  but  what  tongue  can  describe 
this  scene  of  confusion  !  the  whole  crowd  seemed  equally  in- 
spired with  anger,  jealousy,  politics,  patriotism,  and  punch." — 
A  Citizen  of  the  World. 

"  It  is  a  proverb  in  China,  that  a  European  suffers  not  even 
his  spittle  to  be  lost  ;  the  maxim,  however,  is  not  sufficiently 
strong,  since  they  sell  even  their  lies  to  great  advantage.  Every 
nation  drives  a  considerable  trade  in  this  commodity  with  their 
neighbours." — A  Citizen  of  the  World. 

"  '  Nay,  don't  talk  ill  of  my  master,  madam.  I  won't  bear  to 
hear  anybody  talk  ill  of  him  but  myself."—  The  Good-Natured 
Man. 

"You  must  know,  then,  that  I  am  very  well  descended  ;  my 
ancestors  have  made  some  noise  in  the  world ;  for  my  mother 


228  GOLDSMITH 

cried  oysters  and  my  father  beat  a  drum  :  I  am  told  we  have 
even  had  some  trumpeters  in  our  family.  Many  a  nobleman 
cannot  show  so  respectable  a  genealogy."  —  Adventures  of  a 
Strolling  Piper. 


9.  Concise   Diction  —  Nice  Choice   of  Words.— 

"  His  artless  words  were,  each  one,  delicately  chosen  ;  his 
simple  constructions  were  studiously  sought. ' '  —  Edward 
Dowden. 

"  Any  young  writer  who  may  imagine  that  the  power  of 
clear  and  concise  literary  expression  comes  by  nature,  cannot 
do  better  than  study,  in  Mr.  Cunningham's  big  collection  of 
Goldsmith's  writings,  the  continual  and  minute  alterations 
which  the  author  considered  necessary  even  after  the  first  edi- 
tion— sometimes  when  the  second  and  third  editions  had 
been  published.  Many  of  these,  especially  in  the  poetical 
works,  were  merely  improvements  in  sound,  as  suggested  by 
a  singularly  sensitive  ear.  .  .  .  But  the  majority  of  the 
omissions  and  corrections  were  prompted  by  a  careful  taste, 
which  abhorred  everything  redundant  or  slovenly. 
The  English  people  are  very  fond  of  good  English  ;  and  thus 
it  is  that  couplets  from  '  The  Traveller  '  and  '  The  Deserted 
Village '  have  come  into  the  common  stock  of  our  language, 
and  that  sometimes  not  so  much  on  account  of  the  ideas  they 
convey  as  through  their  singular  precision  of  epithet  and 
musical  sound." — William  Black. 

"  He  was  a  great,  perhaps  an  unequalled  master,  of  the 
arts  of  selection  and  condensation.  ...  In  general, 
nothing  is  less  attractive  than  an  epitome  ;  but  the  epitomes 
of  Goldsmith,  even  when  not  concise,  are  always  amusing." 
— -Macaulay. 

"  A  man  who  had  the  art  of  being  minute  without  tedious- 
ness  and  general  without  confusion  ;  whose  language  was  co- 
pious without  exuberance,  exact  without  constraint,  and  easy 
without  weakness. " — Samuel  Johnson. 


GOLDSMITH  229 

"  What  he  aimed  to  do,  and  what  he  succeeded  in  doing, 
was  to  give  a  clear,  concise,  and  readable  account  of  his  sub- 
ject."—^./. Nicoll. 

"  They  ['The  Traveller  '  and  '  The  Deserted  Village  ']  are 
cabinets  of  exquisite  workmanship,  which  will  outlast  hundreds 
of  oracular  shrines  of  oak  ill  put  together." — Leigh  Hunt. 

"  The  language  of  his  prose  works  in  general  is  admitted 
to  be  a  model  of  perfection." — Washington  Irring. 

"  '  The  style  is  the  man,'  "  says  a  French  authority;  at  all 
events,  the  style  is  the  writer.  But  where,  in  this  irregular 
course  of  study — where,  in  his  college  associations  or  his  vil- 
lage festivities — did  this  man,  with  his  rustic  manners  and 
Irish  brogue,  pick  up  a  style  so  pure,  so  delicate  ?  " — Bulwer- 
Lyttcn. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Let  me  no  longer  waste  the  night  over  the  page  of  antiquity 
or  the  sallies  of  contemporary  genius,  but  pursue  the  solitary 
walk,  where  vanity,  ever  changing,  but  a  few  hours  past  walked 
before  me  ;  where  she  kept  up  the  pageant,  and  now,  like  a 
froward  child,  seems  hushed  with  her  own  importunities." — A 
Citizen  of  the  World. 

"  But  times  are  altered  ;  trade's  unfeeling  train 
Usurp  the  land,  and  dispossess  the  swain  ; 
Along  the  lawn,  where  scattered  hamlets  rose, 
Unwieldy  wealth  and  cumbrous  pomp  repose  ; 
And  every  want  to  luxury  allied, 
And  every  pang  that  folly  pays  to  pride." 

—  The  Deserted  Village. 

' '  They  please,  are  pleased,  they  give  to  get  esteem, 
Till,  seeming  blest,  they  grow  to  what  they  seem," 

—  The  Traveller. 

10.  High  Moral  Tone.—"  It  ['The  Vicar  of  Wakefield'] 
has  the  advantage  that  it  is  quite  moral — nay,  in  a  pure  sense 
Christian — represents  the  reward  of  good  will  and  persever- 


230  GOLDSMITH 

ance  in  the  right,  strengthens  an  unconditional  confidence  in 
God,  and  attests  the  final  triumph  of  good  over  evil ;  and  all 
this  without  a  trace  of  cant  or  pedantry.  .  .  .  And  in 
the  end  these  are  the  thoughts  and  feelings  which  have  re- 
claimed us  from  all  the  errors  of  life." — Goethe. 

"  He  is  a  friend  of»virtue,  and  in  his  most  playful  pages 
never  forgets  what  is  due  to  it.  A  gentleness,  delicacy,  and 
purity  of  feeling  distinguishes  whatever  he  wrote,  and  bears  a 
correspondence  to  the  generosity  of  a  disposition  which  knew 
no  bounds  but  his  last  guinea.  .  .  .  He  wrote  to  exalt 
virtue  and  expose  vice ;  and  he  accomplished  his  task  in  a 
manner  which  raises  him  to  the  highest  rank  among  British 
authors." — Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  His  '  Vicar  of  Wakefield  '  and  his  pictures  of  the  village 
pastor  present  religion  under  its  most  endearing  forms,  and 
with  a  feeling  that  could  only  flow  from  the  deep  convictions 
of  the  heart.  .  .  .  Few  productions  of  the  kind  afford 
greater  amusement  in  the  perusal  [than  does  '  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield  '],  and  still  fewer  inculcate  more  impressive  lessons 
of  morality.  Though  wit  and  humor  abound  in  every  page, 
yet  in  the  whole  volume  there  is  not  one  thought  injurious  in 
its  tendency  nor  one  sentiment  that  can  offend  the  chastest 
ear.  Its  language  is  what  '  angels  might  have  heard  and  vir- 
gins told.'  '  —Washington  Irving. 

"Its  ['  Vicar  of  Wakefield's ']  sweet  humanity,  its  simplic- 
ity, its  wisdom  and  its  common  sense — its  happy  mingling  of 
character  and  Christianity,  will  keep  it  sweet  long  after  more 
ambitious  and  in  many  respects  abler  works  have  found  their 
level  with  the  great  democracy  of  the  forgotten." — Austin 
Dobson. 

"  Protestant  and  English  virtue  has  not  a  more  approved 
and  amiable  exemplar.  Religious,  affectionate,  rational,  the 
Vicar  unites  predilections  which  seemed  irreconcilable." — 
Taine. 

"He  had  the  happy  art  of  being  virtuous  in   his  books, 


GOLDSMITH  231 

though  not  altogether  virtuous  out  of  them.  He  had  two 
sides:  the  under  side,  his  life;  the  upper  side — the  golden, 
glorious,  beautiful  side — his  works.  He  gave  good  advice  in 
consequence  of  never  having  taken  it.  ...  By  his  faults, 
his  follies,  his  genius,  his  fooleries,  his  blunders,  his  mistakes, 
and  his  nonsenses,  he  learned,  even  as  a  preacher  would  learn, 
to  preach  well  on  virtue  because  of  his  acquaintance  with  vice. 
Goldsmith  was  a  prince  of  moralists,  a  king  of  max- 
ims, a  master  of  apothegms,  lord  of  proverbs.  .  .  .  He 
had  a  disinclination  for  the  clerical  profession  [for  which  he 
had  been  educated] — he  said  he  was  not  good  enough  for  it. 
Deep  down  below  all  his  nonsense  there  was  a  heart 
of  goodness  which  made  him  shrink  back  in  this  case." — 
George  Daw  son. 

"  Its  ['  Vicar  of  Wakefield's  ']  perfect  purity  of  tone  afforded 
a  pleasing  contrast  to  most  of  the  works  of  fiction  that  had 
preceded  it." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  Good  predominant  over  evil  is  briefly  the  purpose  and 
moral  of  the  little  story  ['  Vicar  of  Wakefield '].  It  is  designed 
to  show  us  that  patience  in  suffering,  that  persevering  reliance 
on  the  providence  of  God,  that  quiet  labor,  cheerful  endeavor, 
and  an  indulgent  forgiveness  of  the  faults  and  infirmities  of 
others,  are  the  easy  and  certain  means  of  pleasure  in  this  world 
and  of  turning  pain  to  noble  uses.  It  is  designed  to  show  us 
that  the  heroism  and  self-denial  needed  for  the  duties  of  life 
are  not  of  the  superhuman  sort ;  that  they  may  coexist  with 
many  follies,  with  some  simple  weaknesses,  with  many  harm- 
less vanities  ;  and  that,  in  the  improvement  of  mankind,  near 
and  remote,  in  its  progress  through  worldly  content  to  final 
happiness,  the  humblest  of  men  have  their  places  assigned 
them  and  their  parts  allotted  them  to  play." — John  Forster. 

"  His  talents  were  sacredly  devoted  to  the  cause  of  virtue 
and  humanity.  No  malignant  satire  ever  came  from  his  pen." 
— Bayard  Tuckerman. 

"His  chaste   pathos  makes  him  an  insinuating  moralist. 


232  GOLDSMITH 

His  quiet  enthusiasm  leads  the  affections  to  humble 
things  without  a  vulgar  association." — Thomas  Campbell. 

"  He  is  so  remarkably  free  from  the  coarseness  and  ribaldry 
which  were  more  than  tolerated  in  some  of  the  ablest  writers 
of  his  time  that  it  seems  as  if  he  could  not  have  lived  in  the 
midst  of  licentiousness  and  known  how  much  the  public  taste 
would  endure.  .  .  .  When  we  come  to  think  over  the 
matter  and  find  scenes,  reflections,  feelings,  whole  passages  and 
simple  sayings,  not  merely  remembered  but  so  wrought  into 
the  mind  that  they  are  a  part  of  itself  rather  than  its  furniture, 
and  that  our  tempers  have  been  softened  by  them,  our  char- 
acters and  sentiments  moulded,  and  our  happiness  increased, 
we  own  that  some  power,  deep  as  any  philosophy,  has  been 
operating  without  our  knowledge  to  produce  effects  like  these, 
and  that,  while  reading,  we  little  thought  of  the  mild,  tender, 
yet  clear  light  which  made  the  images  at  once  distinct  and 
lovely." — W.  E.  Channing. 

"  How  comes  it  that  in  all  the  miry  paths  of  life  that  he  had 
trod  no  speck  ever  sullied  the  robe  of  his  modest  and  graceful 
muse  ?  How,  amidst  all  that  love  for  inferior  company,  which 
never  to  the  last  forsook  him,  did  he  keep  his  genius  so  free 
from  every  touch  of  vulgarity  ?  What  style  in  the  English 
language  is  more  thoroughly  elegant  and  high-bred —  more 
impressed  with  the  stamp  of  a  gentleman — its  ease  so  polished, 
its  dignity  so  sweet  ?  " — Bulwer-Lytton, 

"  In  an  age  when  drunkenness  was  fashionable,  he  was  not  a 
drinker;  in  an  age  which  appears  to  me  strangely  coarse  in 
language  and  corrupt  in  morals  the  only  immorality  of  which 
Goldsmith  was  guilty  was  gambling,  which,  in  the  estimation 
of  his  contemporaries,  was  no  immorality  at  all ;  and  in  his 
poems  there  is  a  striking  freedom  from  the  moral  blemishes  of 
Sterne  and  Swift,  of  Fielding  and  Smollett.  .  .  .  Had 
he  lived  to  old  age  it  is  not  likely  that  he  would  have  pro- 
duced a  nobler  poem  than  '  The  Deserted  Village.'  '  — S.  M. 
Towle. 


GOLDSMITH  233 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  O  my  children,  if  you  could  but  learn  to  commune  with  your 
own  hearts  and  know  what  noble  company  you  can  make  them, 
you  would  little  regard  the  elegance  and  splendor  of  the  worth- 
less."—  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"  Heaven,  we  are  assured,  is  much  more  pleased  to  view  a 
repentant  sinner  than  ninety-nine  persons  who  have  supported 
a  course  of  undeviating  rectitude  :  and  this  is  right ;  for  that 
single  effort,  by  which  we  stop  short  in  the  down-hill  path  to  per- 
dition, is  of  itself  a  greater  exertion  of  virtue  than  a  hundred  acts 
of  justice.": — Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

"  '  Both  wit  and  understanding,'  cried  I,  '  are  trifles  without 
integrity  ;  it  is  that  which  gives  value  to  every  character.  The 
ignorant  peasant,  without  fault,  is  greater  than  the  philosopher 
with  many  ;  for  what  is  genius  and  courage  without  a  heart  ? 
"  An  honest  man  is  the  noblest  work  of  God  !  "  .  .  .  Men 
should  be  prized  not  for  their  exemption  from  fault,  but  for  the 
size  of  the  virtues  they  are  possessed  of.'  " — Vicar  of  Wakefield. 


II.  Mock-heroic  Declamation. — "Goldsmith  some- 
times assumes  a  declamatory  style,  with  oratorical  interro- 
gation and  answer  and  paragraphs  in  the  form  of  a  climax. 
In  these  declamations  there  is  usually  a  tincture  of  mock  hero- 
ism."— Minto. 

"Among  the  minor  writings  of  Goldsmith  there  is  none 
more  delightful  than  this  ['  The  Life  of  Richard  Nash  ']  :  the 
mock-heroic  gravity,  the  half-familiar,  contemptuous  good 
nature  with  which  he  composes  this  Funeral  March  of  the 
Marionette,  are  extremely  whimsical  and  amusing." — William 
Black. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Does  this  look  like  security  ?  Does  this  look  like  confidence  ? 
No,  madam  ;  every  moment  that  shows  me  your  merit  only  serves 
to  increase  my  diffidence  and  confusion." — She  Stoops  to  Conquer. 


234  GOLDSMITH 

"  This,  too,  is  one  of  my  nephew's  tjopeful  associates.  O  van- 
ity, thou  constant  deceiver,  how  do  all  thy  efforts  to  exalt  serve 
but  to  sink  us !  Thy  false  colourings,  like  those  employed  to 
heighten  beauty,  only  seem  to  mend  that  bloom  which  they  con- 
tribute to  destroy." — The  Good-Naturcd  Man. 

"Doubt  my  sincerity,  madam?  By  your  dear  self  I  swear; 
ask  the  brave  if  they  desire  glory  ?  ask  cowards  if  they  court 
safety  ?  ask  the  sick  if  they  long  for  health  ?  ask  misers  if  they 
love  money  ?  " — The  Good-Natured  Man. 

"  Hail,  O  ye  simple,  honest  Brahmins  of  the  East !  Ye  inof- 
fensive friends  of  all  that  were  born  to  happiness  as  well  as  you  ! 
You  never  sought  a  short-lived  pleasure  from  the  miseries  of 
others  ! "— A  Citizen  of  the  World. 

12.  Unexpected  Turn— Epigram— Antithesis. — In 

his  plays  and  his  essays  Goldsmith  is  fond  of  surprising  his 
reader  by  giving  to  the  sentence  an  unexpected  turn  just  at  the 
end.  This  is  of  the  nature  of  epigram,  and  comes  perhaps  logi- 
cally under  the  head  of  wit,  already  discussed  ;  it  is  so  marked 
a  trait,  however,  that  we  venture  to  consider  it  distinctly. 
This  sudden  trip  at  the  close  of  an  otherwise  sober  sentence 
"  peculiarly  suited  Goldsmith's  gay  volatility." 

"  One  is  kept  continually  on  the  alert  by  the  epigrammati- 
cal  turn  of  his  sentences." — Knowles. 

"He  was  taken  with   the  charm  of  rhetorical  antithesis, 
and  labored  to  deliver  his  sayings  in  an  antithetical  form."- 
Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"After  I  had  resided  at  college  for  seven  years  my  father  died 
and  left  me — his  blessing." — The  Man  in  Black. 

"  O  friendship  !  thou  fond  soother  of  the  human  breast,  to  thee 
we  fly  in  every  calamity  ;  to  thee  the  wretched  seek  for  succor  ; 
on  thee  the  care-tired  son  of  misery  fondly  relies  ;  from  thy  kind 
assistance  the  unfortunate  always  hopes  for  relief,  and  may  be 
ever  sure  of — disappointment." —  The  Man  in  Black. 

"  I  have  seen  a  lady  dressed  from  top  to  toe  in  her  own  manu- 


GOLDSMITH  235 

factures  formerly.  But  nowadays,  there's  not  a  thing  of  their 
own  manufacture  about  them — except  their  faces."  —  The  Good- 
Matured  Man. 

"  Olivia  wished  for  many  lovers,  Sophia  to  secure  one.  Oliv- 
ia was  often  affected  with  too  great  a  desire  to  please,  Sophia 
even  repressed  excellence  from  her  fears  to  offend.  The  one  en- 
tertained me  with  her  vivacity  when  I  was  gay,  the  other  with  her 
sense  when  I  was  serious." — The  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON,  1709-1784 

Biographical  Outline. — Samuel  Johnson,  born  at  Lich- 
field,  September  18,  1709;  father  a  bookseller  and  a  man 
of  some  standing  in  church  and,  political  circles;  Johnson 
inherits  from  his  father  "  a  powerful  frame  and  a  vile  melan- 
choly ;  "  he  is  remarkably  precocious  ;  suffers  as  a  child  from 
scrofula,  which  disfigures  his  face  and  affects  the  sight  of  one 
eye  ;  is  "  touched  "  by  Queen  Anne;  after  learning  his  let- 
ters at  a  dame  school  he  enters  Lichfield  School,  where  the 
influence  of  the  brutal  head-master,  one  Hunter,  permanently 
affects  Johnson's  educational  theories  ;  in  the  autumn  of  1725 
he  visits  an  uncle,  Cornelius  Ford,  a  clergyman  of  convivial 
tastes,  who  recognizes  Johnson's  ability,  and  causes  him  to 
be  transferred  to  a  school  at  Stourbridge  kept  by  one  Went- 
worth,  whom  Johnson  is  said  to  have  assisted  in  teaching  ; 
after  remaining  a  year  at  Stourbridge  he  returns  to  his  father's 
house  in  Lichfield  and  spends  two  years  in  "  lounging," 
but  is  "  immoderately  fond  "  of  reading  old  romances;  he 
reads  also  widely  in  other  lines,  and  writes  a  few  verses  ;  Oc- 
tober 31,  1728,  he  enters  Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  being 
at  first  supported  by  one  Andrew  Corbet,  "  a  neighboring 
gentleman,"  as  a  companion  to  Corbet's  son,  then  at  Pem- 
broke ;  a  disagreement  with  Corbet  causes  Johnson's  supplies 
to  be  stopped  after  a  time  ;  he  remains  at  Oxford  steadily  till 
December  12,  1729,  and  is  there  at  intervals  till  October  8, 
1731  ;  he  despises  his  tutor's  lectures,  surprises  the  college  by 
the  extent  of  his  reading,  and  translates  Pope's  "Messiah" 
into  Latin  verse,  which  is  published  in  1731  in  an  "  Oxford 
Miscellany  ;  "  while  at  Oxford  Johnson  is  "  miserably  poor," 
suffers  from  hypochondria,  and  is  sometimes  proudly  insubor- 

236 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  237 

dinate  ;  he  reads  Greek  and  metaphysics  in  a  desultory  way, 
disdains  financial  aid,  and  leaves  Oxford  late  in  1729  be- 
cause of  his  poverty  ;  his  father,  practically  bankrupt,  dies 
in  December,  1731,  leaving  Johnson  but  ,£20;  after  a 
long  search  for  employment  he  becomes  an  usher  in  Market- 
Bosworth  School,  probably  early  in  1732  ;  he  is  harshly  treat- 
ed by  Sir  Wolstan  Dixie,  patron  of  the  school  (to  whom 
Johnson  acted  as  chaplain),  and  leaves  the  school  after  a  ser- 
vice of  a  few  months  ;  he  goes  to  Birmingham  and  takes 
lodgings  with  a  Mr.  Warren,  chief  bookseller  of  Birmingham 
and  publisher  of  the  Birmingham  Journal,  to  which  Johnson 
becomes  a  contributor  ;  he  translates  for  the  Journal  Labo's 
"Voyage  to  Abyssinia,"  and  receives  five  guineas  for  the 
work;  Johnson  returns  to  Lichfield  about  1734  and  endeav- 
ors to  obtain  subscribers  for  an  edition  of  Politian's  Latin 
poems,  which  he  proposes  to  publish  ;  in  July,  1735,  ^e  mar" 
ries  a  Mrs.  Porter,  the  widow  of  a  Birmingham  mercer,  a 
woman  two  years  Johnson's  senior  and  having  a  daughter 
(Lucy)  by  her  first  husband ;  she  brings  to  Johnson  about 
;£8oo  and  they  take  a  house  at  Edial,  near  Lichfield,  where, 
as  an  advertisement  in  the  Gentleman' 's  Magazine  announces, 
"  young  gentlemen  are  boarded  and  taught  the  Greek  and 
Latin  languages  by  Samuel  Johnson;"  among  his  pupils, 
who  never  exceeded  eight  in  number,  were  Garrick  and  his 
brother  ;  Johnson's  peculiarities  of  temper  and  appearance 
cause  him  to  fail  in  two  attempts,  made  about  this  time,  to 
secure  positions  in  public  schools;  March  3,  1737,  he  starts 
with  Garrick  for  London  to  seek  his  fortune,  leaving  his  family 
in  lodgings  at  Lichfield  ;  while  at  Edial  Johnson  had  written 
three  acts  of  his  drama  "  Irene  ;  "  he  finds  a  patron  in  Henry 
Hervey,  third  son  of  the  Earl  of  Bristol  ;  he  spends  the 
summer  of  1737  at  Lichfield  and  there  completes  "  Irene  ;  " 
returns  to  London  with  his  wife  in  the  autumn,  taking  lodg- 
ings for  himself  and  wife  in  Woodstock  Street,  Hanover 
Square,  and  leaving  Lucy  Porter  with  his  mother  at  Lich- 


238  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

field;  "Irene"  is  successively  refused  by  the  two  principal 
theatrical  managers  of  the  day ;  Johnson  contributes  to  the 
Gentleman's  Magazine  for  March,  1738,  a  Latin  ode  en- 
titled Sylvanus  Urban,  and  soon  becomes  a  regular  con- 
tributor ;  he  also  begins,  about  1738,  to  edit  the  parliamen- 
tary debates,  first  reported  by  William  Guthrie  and  published 
by  Johnson  fictitiously  under  the  title  "  Doings  of  the  Senate 
,of  Lilliput ;  "  Johnson  himself  writes  the  debates  from  July, 
1741,  to  March,  1744,  some  of  them  being  derived  second- 
hand from  actual  hearers  and  others  being  simply  the  product 
of  his  own  imagination  ;  he  afterward  told  Boswell  that  he 
ceased  writing  the  debates  because  he  "  would  not  be  acces- 
sory to  the  propagation  of  a  falsehood;  "  in  1738  he  pub- 
lishes his  satire  "London,"  imitating  Juvenal's  Third  Sa- 
tire, and  receives  ten  guineas  for  the  copyright ;  it  appears 
on  the  same  day  as  Pope's  "  Epilogue,"  and  reaches  a  second 
edition  within  a  week  ;  in  1739  Johnson  applies  for  the  prin- 
cipalship  of  a  school  at  Appleby,  and  Pope  tries  to  secure  for 
him  the  degree  of  A.M.  from  Dublin  University,  the  posses- 
sion of  the  degree  being  a  necessary  condition  of  appointment 
at  Appleby ;  both  attempts  fail,  as  does  an  effort  made  by 
Johnson  soon  afterward  to  secure  permission  to  practise  as  an 
advocate  at  Doctor's  Commons  ;  he  then  engages  with  Cave, 
the  publisher,  to  make  a  translation  of  Father  Paul's  "  His- 
tory," and  receives  ^49  is.  for  work  done  upon  it,  but  the 
translation  is  never  completed  ;  Johnson  continues  to  write 
for  the  Gentleman's  Magazine;  in  1742  he  is  employed  to 
catalogue  the  library  of  Harley,  second  Earl  of  Osborne  ;  the 
earl  treats  Johnson  insolently,  and  is  promptly  knocked  down 
by  the  impecunious  librarian  ;  little  is  known  of  Johnson's 
life  about  this  time  till  February,  1744,  when  he  publishes 
his  "Life  of  Savage,"  in  which  he  rehearses  the  hardships 
and  the  extreme  poverty  that  he  and  Savage  had  suffered  to- 
gether; in  1745  he  publishes  in  pamphlet  form  certain  crit- 
icisms of  Hanmer's  edition  of  Shakespeare,  with  proposals  for 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  239 

a  new  edition  by  himself;  in  1747  he  publishes  the  plan  of 
his  "  Dictionary,"  inscribing  the  work  to  Lord  Chesterfield  ; 
by  his  contract  with  the  booksellers,  Johnson  was  to  receive 
^1,575  for  the  work  ;  he  employs  six  amanuenses,  and  him- 
self reads  and  marks  all  the  books  used  as  sources  of  illustra- 
tive quotations;  while  preparing  the  "  Dictionary  "  he  writes 
"The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes"  (published  in  January, 
1749),  and  receives  fifteen  guineas  for  the  copyright;  in 
1749  Garrick,  having  become  manager  of  the  Drury  Lane 
Theatre,  brings  out  Johnson's  drama  "Irene;"  it  runs  for 
nine  nights,  and  brings  to  Johnson  ^195  i-js.  as  royalty, 
which  is  supplemented  with  £100  received  for  the  copyright, 
but  the  play  is  really  a  failure,  and  Johnson  does  not  again 
try  dramatic  writing ;  he  publishes  the  first  number  of  the 
Rambler,  March  20,  1750,  and  issues  it  twice  a  week  there- 
after till  March  14,  1752,  himself  writing  practically  all  the 
contents;  Johnson  receives  two  guineas  a  paper;  the  sales 
rarely  exceeded  five  hundred  copies,  but  the  collected  edition 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  numbers  was  popular,  and  was  re- 
printed ten  times  during  Johnson's  life;  the  Rambler  estab- 
lishes his  reputation  as  a  moralist;  in  1750  he  writes  a  pro- 
logue for  Milton's  "  Comus,"  then  performed  at  Drury  Lane 
for  the  benefit  of  Milton's  granddaughter ;  he  loses  his  wife 
in  1752,  and  writes  a  sermon  to  be  preached  at  her  funeral, 
which  was  not  preached  but  was  published  after  Johnson's 
death  ;  he  contributes  to  the  Adventurer,  established  by  his 
friend  and  imitator,  Hawkesworth,  during  1753—54;  early 
in  1755,  when  the  "Dictionary"  was  nearing  completion, 
Johnson  writes  his  famous  letter  to  Lord  Chesterfield,  reject- 
ing that  nobleman's  tardy  offer  of  assistance  with  the  mem- 
orable words,  "  I  am  indifferent  and  cannot  enjoy  it,  I  am 
lonely  and  cannot  impart  it.  I  am  known  and  do  not  need 
it;"  late  in  1 754  he  visits  Warton  at  Oxford  and  receives 
(February  20,  1755)  the  honorary  degree  of  M.A.  ;  the 
"Dictionary"  appears  April  15,  1755,  and  is  at  once  ac- 


240  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

cepted  as  a  standard  authority;  from  1749  onward  Johnson 
was  connected  with  various  tavern  clubs,  and  formed  friend- 
ships with  Langton,  Beauclerk,  Burney,  Goldsmith,  Rey- 
nolds, Burke,  and  many  other  prominent  men  of  the  time  ; 
between  1752  and  1759  he  takes  into  his  home  a  blind  Welsh 
lady  in  reduced  circumstances  named  Williams,  an  impov- 
erished French  waiter  named  Levett,  Mrs.  Desmouslins,  the 
daughter  of  his  godfather,  a  Miss  Carmichael,  and  one  Bark- 
er, a  colored  servant,  educated  by  Johnson ;  all  these  de- 
pendents are  cared  for  by  Johnson  till  their  deaths;  although 
he  had  received  £100  more  than  was  promised  for  the  "  Dic- 
tionary," Johnson  was  so  poor  in  1752  as  to  be  sued  for  a 
debt  of  ^£51  3-y. ,  which  was  paid  by  a  loan  from  Richardson  ; 
he  publishes  the  first  number  of  the  Idler,  April  15,  1758,  and 
issues  it  weekly  thereafter  till  April  5,  1760;  his  profits  on 
the  collected  edition,  which  appeared  in  October,  1761,  were 
about  ^84;  on  the  death  of  his  mother  in  January,  1759, 
in  order  to  raise  money  for  her  funeral  and  other  expenses, 
Johnson  wrote  "  Rasselas,"  "in  the  evenings  of  one  week," 
and  received  ^1,251  from  the  first  two  editions;  about  this 
time  he  gives  up  his  house  in  Gough  Square  and  takes  lodgings 
at  i  Inner  Temple  Lane,  where  he  lives  "  in  indolent  pov- 
erty;  "  in  1760-61  he  does  little  except  to  work  on  his  edi- 
tion of  Shakespeare ;  in  July,  1762,  through  the  intercession 
of  friends,  he  receives  from  George  III.  a  pension  of  ^300  a 
year ;  he  is  requested  by  the  ministers  to  write  pamphlets, 
and  is  supplied  with  materials  for  the  same  ;  among  these 
pamphlets  are  The  False  Alarm  (1770)  and  Taxation  no 
Tyranny  (1775)  ;  the  pension  relieves  Johnson  from  pecun- 
iary cares,  but  nearly  palsies  his  pen  ;  he  lies  in  bed  till 
noon,  and  declares,  "  No  man  but  a  blockhead  ever  wrote 
except  for  money  ;  "  meets  Boswell  in  May,  1763,  "  and  thus 
became  visible  to  posterity;  "  during  the  winter  of  1763-64 
he  unites  with  Reynolds,  Burke,  and  Goldsmith  in  forming 
the  famous  Turk's  Head  Club,  which  had  weekly  suppers  till 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  241 

1772  and  then  fortnightly  suppers  till  1783,  the  membership 
gradually  increasing  to  thirty  members;  in  1764  Johnson 
meets  and  becomes  intimate  with  the  Thrales  (Thrale  was  a 
wealthy  brewer  of  Streatham),  who  have  great  influence  on 
his  life  thereafter ;  for  the  next  twenty  years  he  is  practically 
a  member  of  the  Thrale  family  ;  he  is  recognized  as  a  literary 
dictator,  and  receives  wide  homage  ;  his  conversations  are 
recorded  by  Boswell,  Mrs.  Thrale  (afterward  Mrs.  Piozzi), 
and  Madame  d'Arblay;  in  October,  1765,  heat  last  brings 
out  his  "  Shakespeare,"  and  receives  ^£475  for  the  first  two 
editions;  in  May,  1777,  he  engages  to  write  prefaces  fora 
proposed  collection  of  the  English  poets,  and  names  his  own 
price ;  the  first  four  volumes  of  the  collection  appeared  in 
1779  and  the  last  four  in  1781  ;  Johnson  received,  altogether, 
four  hundred  guineas  for  the  work,  though  the  publishers 
would  have  given  a  thousand  or  fifteen  hundred  if  he  had  so 
demanded  ;  he  makes  frequent  excursions  to  Lichfield  and 
Oxford  and,  in  the  autumn  of  1771,  visits  the  Hebrides  in 
company  with  Boswell;  in  1775  Johnson  publishes  an  ac- 
count of  the  latter  journey  ;  in  company  with  the  Thrales  he 
visits  Wales  in  1774  and  Paris  in  1775  ;  in  1781,  on  the 
death  of  Thrale,  Johnson  becomes  his  executor  and  receives 
from  him  a  legacy  of  £200  ;  he  suffers  much  from  asthma 
and  gout,  and  loses  his  home  with  Mrs.  Thrale  on  the  depart- 
ure of  that  lady  for  an  Italian  trip  under  the  guidance  of  the 
musician  Piozzi,  whom  she  afterward  married ;  Johnson  re- 
turns to  his  house  in  Fleet  Street;  he  visits  Oxford  again,  with 
Boswell,  in  1784;  he  dies  at  his  home  December  13,  1784, 
and  is  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  his  property  at  his 
death  amounted  to  ^£2,300. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON   JOHNSON'S   STYLE. 
Stephen,    L. ,  "Hours  in  a    Library."     New  York,    1894,    Putnam,   2: 

1-33- 

Minto,  W.,  "English  Prose  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 
417-428. 
16 


242  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

Stephen,   L.,  "English  Men  of   Letters."     New  York,   1879,   Harper, 

166-195. 
Hazlitt,  W.,  "  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."     London,  1884,  G.  Bell 

&  Sons,  2:  133-141. 
Waller,  J.  F.,  "Johnson  and  Boswell."     London,  j88i,  Cassell  &  Co., 

1-185. 
Masson,  E.  T.,  "Johnson,  his  Words  and  Ways."     New  York,    18/9, 

Harper,  1-306. 
Brougham,  Lord  Henry,    "Works."     London,  1846,  Chas.  Kingsley  & 

Co.,  1 :  304-378. 
Welsh,  A.   H.,  "The  Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago, 

1884,  Griggs,  2:  172-178. 
Murphy,  A.,  "An  Essay  on  the  Life  and  Genius  of  Samuel  Johnson" 

(Johnson's  Works).     New  York,  1846,  Harper,  I  :  1-33. 
Payne,  J.,  "Johnson's  Life  and  Writings."     New  York,  1855,  Harper, 

1 :  13-100. 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "Essays"  (Miscellaneous  Works).     New  York,  1880, 

Harper,  I  :  58 1-628  and  index. 

Hunt,  T.  W.,  "  Representative  English  Prose."     New  York,  1887,  Arm- 
strong, 310-333. 
Craik,  G.  L.,  "  History  of  English  Literature. "    New  York,  1869,  Scrib- 

ner,  323-328. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "History  of  English  Literature."     London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 343-35°- 
Duyckinck,    E.   A.,    "  Portrait  Gallery."     New  York,    1875,    Johnson, 

Wilson  &  Co.,  2:  5-27. 
Gosse,  E.,   "History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature."     New  York, 

1889.  Macmillan,  282-295. 
Stephen,  L.,   "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."     New  York,  1888, 

Macmillan,  30:  30-47. 
Hazlitt,  W.   C.,  "Offspring  of  Thought,"  etc.     London,   1884,  Reeves 

&  Co.,  47-56. 
Carlyle,  T.,  "  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. "    London,  1847,  Chap^ 

man  &  Hall,  3  :  18-90. 
Carlyle,  T.,    "Heroes  and  Hero  Worship."      Philadelphia,    1894,  Alte- 

mus,  222-246. 
Grant,  Lieut. -Col.   F.,    "Samuel  Johnson."     London,    1887,  W.   Scott, 

150-170. 
Scott,  Sir  W.,   "Lives  of  the  Novelists."     New  York,  1872,  Denham, 

234-245. 
Hawthorne,  N.,  "Tales,  Sketches,"  etc.    Boston,  1870,  Fields,  Osgood 

&  Co.,  294-306. 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON  243 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicra."     New  York,  1887,  Scribner,  I :  III,  etc. ; 

2:   109-144. 

Towers,  J.,  "Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,"  etc.     London,   1886,  Dilly,  1-124. 
Russell,  A.  P.,  "Characteristics."     Boston,  1893,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  52-74. 

Masson,  D.,  "British  Novelists."     Boston,  1892,  W.  Small,  156-157. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  238-251. 
Taine,    H.   A.,    "History  of  English  Literature."      New  York,    1875, 

Holt,  2  :  434-443  and  v.  index. 
Allibone,  A.,  "Dictionary  of  Authors."     Philadelphia,  1858,   Childs  & 

Co.,  I  :  971-983. 
Bascom,  J.,    "  Philosophy  of  English  Literature."     New  York,    1874, 

Putnam,  186-208. 
Buckland,  A.,  "The  Story  of  English  Literature."     London,  1882,  Cas- 

sell  &  Co.,  442-457. 
Dawson,  G.,    "Biographical   Lectures."      London,    1886,   Kegan    Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  159-171. 
Gilfillan,   G.,    "Gallery  of   Literary  Portraits."     Edinburgh,    1857,  2: 

217-226. 
Perry,  T.  S.,    "English   Literature  in  the  Eighteenth  Century."     New 

York,  1883,  Harper,  403-415. 
L'Estrange,   A.   G.,    "  History  of    English   Humor."      London,    1878, 

Hurst  &  Blackett,  110-113. 
Page,  \V.  P.,  "Johnson's  Life  and  Writings."    New  York,  1885,  Harper, 

1 :  13-100. 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893, 

Harper,  2:  23-55. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "  Encyclopaedia  Britannica."     New  York,  1881,  Scrib- 
ner,  13:   719-730. 

Cornhill  Magazine,  29 :  280-297  (L.  Stephen). 
Macmillaii'f  Magazine,  38:  153-160  (M.  Arnold);  57:    190-194(0.  B. 

Hill);  38:   153-160  (M.  Arnold). 
New  Monthly  Magazine,  103  :  18-27  (Sir  Nathaniel). 
Monthly  Review,  6l  :  I-IO  (Bathurst) ;   81-92;  186-191. 
Linen's  Living  Age,  144:  259-273^.    Dennis);  52:  742-750  (G.  D.); 

176:  288-292  (G.  B.  Hill);  45:  221-227  (J-  Murray);  138:  86-93 
(Matthew  Arnold). 

Harper's  Magazine,  82 :  927-932  (Walter  Besant). 
National  Magazine,  I:   393-402;   2:   206-213  (Courthope). 
Democratic  Review,  II  :    165-171  (M.  Darnlay). 
Contemporary  Review,  55 :  88-99  (G.  B.  Hill) ;  32 :  707-728  (W.  Cyples). 


244  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

Quarterly  Review,  46:    1-46. 

North  American  Review,  34:  91-119  (Peabody). 

The  Nation,  45  :   296-299  (Lounsbury). 

Eclectic  Magazine,  40  ;   424-427  (Macaulay)  ;  34 :  492-500. 

British  Quarterly  Review,  70 :   347-372  (J.  Dennis). 

Eclectic  Magazine,  34  :   492-500. 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Latinized  Diction. — Johnson's  diction  abounds  in 
sonorous  Latin  derivatives.  He  once  said  of  himself  that  he 
had  used,  in  a  certain  work  of  his,  "  too  big  words  and  too 
many  of  them."  This  quality  of  his  style  has  been  so  gener- 
ally noticed  as  to  give  us  the  permanent  adjective  Johnsonian 
or  Johnsonese.  Carlyle  calls  it  "a  wondrous  buckram  style, 
.  a  measured  grandiloquence,  stepping  or  rather  stalk- 
ing along  in  a  very  solemn  way,  but  a  phraseology  that  al- 
ways has  something  in  it."  Goldsmith  once  said  to  Johnson, 
"  Doctor,  if  you  were  to  write  a  fable  about  little  fishes,  you 
would  make  them  talk  like  whales."  It  is  but  fair  to  say, 
however,  that  this  trait  is  not  found  in  Johnson's  memorable 
table-talk  nor  prominently  in  his  later  writings. 

"Johnson's  memory  for  words,  and  consequent  command 
of  language,  was  amazing.  In  this  respect  he  stands  in  the 
very  first  rank.  One  might  suppose,  from  what  is  usually  said 
concerning  the  great  preponderance  of  Latin  words  in  his  dic- 
tion, that  he  failed  in  command  of  homelier  language  ;  but  this 
is  a  mistake.  His  Rambler  is  highly  Latinized  ;  but  in  his 
Preface  to  Shakespeare,  1768,  we  trace  the  beginning  of  a 
homelier  style.  In  his  '  Lives  of  the  Poets  '  the  style  is  not  so 
Latinized  as  the  average  style  of  the  present  day.  The  pro- 
portion of  Latin  words  is  not  above  half  as  great  as  in  a  leader 
of  the  Times.  He  is  often  studiously  homely,  and  shows  a 
perfect  command  of  homely  diction.  .  .  .  Perhaps  the 
most  common  objection  to  Johnson's  style  is  that  it  contains 
too  many  heavy  words  of  Latin  origin.  The  objection  is  just, 
but  there  are  one  or  two  things  which  the  objectors  com- 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  245 

monly  overlook.  One  is  that  his  earlier  style  is  much  more 
Latinized  than  his  later  :  ...  his  '  Lives  of  the  Poets  ' 
contains  more  of  the  Saxon  element  than  the  average  style 
of  the  present  day.  Another  thing  is  that  his  Latin  deriv- 
atives are  not  of  his  own  coining.  .  .  .  Finally,  he  is 
much  less  Latinized  than  several  writers  of  note  both  before 
and  after  him.  .  .  .  Johnson  had  not  the  qualifications 
of  a  popular  expositor.  His  diction  was  too  Latinized,  and 
he  did  not  sufficiently  relieve  the  dryness  of  general  statements 
by  examples  and  illustrations." — Minto. 

"It  is  well  known  that  he  made  less  use  than  any  other 
eminent  writer  of  those  strong  plain  words,  Anglo-Saxon  or 
Norman-French,  of  which  the  roots  lie  in  the  inmost  depths 
of  our  language,  and  that  he  felt  a  vicious  partiality  for  terms 
which,  long  after  our  own  speech  had  been  fixed,  were  bor- 
rowed from  the  Greek  and  Latin,  and  which,  therefore,  even 
when  lawfully  naturalized,  must  be  considered  as  born  aliens, 
not  entitled  to  rank  with  the  king's  English.  .  .  .  His 
conversation  appears  to  have  been  quite  equal  to  his  writings  in 
matter,  and  far  superior  to  them  in  manner.  When  he  talked 
he  clothed  his  wit  and  his  sense  in  forcible  and  natural  expres- 
sions. As  soon  as  he  took  his  pen  in  his  hand  to  write  for 
the  public,  his  style  became  systematically  vicious.  All  his 
books  are  written  in  a  learned  language — in  a  language 
which  nobody  hears  from  his  mother  or  his  nurse ;  in  a  lan- 
guage in  which  nobody  ever  quarrels  or  drives  bargains  or 
makes  love — in  a  language  in  which  nobody  ever  thinks. 
It  is  clear  that  Johnson  himself  did  not  think  in  the 
dialect  in  which  he  wrote.  The  expressions  which  came  first 
to  his  tongue  were  simple,  energetic,  and  picturesque.  When  he 
wrote  for  publication,  he  did  his  sentences  out  of  English  into 
Johnsonese.  His  letters  from  the  Hebrides  to  Mrs.  Thrale  are 
the  original  of  that  work  of  which  the  '  Journey  to  the  Heb- 
rides '  is  the  translation,  and  it  is  amusing  to  compare  the  two 
versions.  'When  we  were  taken  upstairs,'  says  he  in  one  of 


246  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

his  letters,  '  a  dirty  fellow  bounced  out  of  the  bed  on  which 
one  of  us  was  to  lie.1  This  incident  is  recorded  in  the  '  Jour- 
ney '  as  follows  :  '-Out  of  one  of  the  beds  on  which  we  were 
to  repose,  started  up,  at  our  entrance,  a  man  black  as  a  Cy- 
clops from  the  forge.'  Sometimes  Johnson  translated  aloud. 
'  The  Rehearsal,'  he  said,  very  unjustly,  '  has  not  enough 
wit  to  keep  it  sweet;  '  then,  after  a  pause,  '  it  has  not  vital- 
ity enough  to  preserve  it  from  putrefaction.'  '  — Mtiiciti/tiy. 

"  What  he  himself  called  his  habit  of  using  too  big  words 
and  too  many  of  them  was  not  affectation,  but  as  much  the 
result  of  special  idiosyncrasy  as  his  queer  gruntings  and 
twitchings.  ...  In  his  letters  .  .  .  we  see  that  he 
could  be  pithy  enough  when  he  chose  to  descend  from  his 
Latinized  abstractions  to  good  concrete  English,  but  that  is 
only  when  he  becomes  excited." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  In  childish  memories  he  is  too  constrained  to  be  associ- 
ated with  dust  and  dictionaries  and  those  provoking  obstacles 
to  boys'  reading — long  words." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"This  [Johnson's  Anglo-Latin  element]  is  one  of  the  first 
features  that  impresses  the  reader  as  he  studies  the  prose  struct- 
ure and  diction,  and  it  becomes  more  manifest  as  the  perusal 
goes  on.  .  .  .  There  is  a  wide-spread  antipathy  by  way 
of  presumption  against  the  Johnsonian  style  in  this  regard,  so 
that  many  even  among  the  educated  must  confess  to  an  utter 
ignorance  of  the  pages  that  they  pronounce  Latinized.  .  .  . 
His  diction  is  beyond  question  a  mixed  one.  The  foreign 
element  is  prominent  enough  to  call  attention  to  it  as  foreign 
and  thus  to  detract  from  its  native  simplicity  as  seen  in  Swift 
and  Addison.  .  .  .  The  diction  of  the  Rambler  is  a  dis- 
tinctively classical  diction.  It  is  English  in  Latin  dress.  In 
his  antipathy  to  the  French,  he  favored  the  Latin  unduly. 
He  abhorred  all  Gallicisms,  but  in  deference  to  the 
influence  of  such  authors  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  by  reason 
of  his  personal  classical  attainments,  he  gave  undue  weight  to 
the  idioms  of  Rome.  It  is  thus  that  we  have  such  terms  as 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  247 

obstreperous,  ratiocination  and  adumbrate  in  great  profu- 
sion. .  .  .  This  Latinic  element  is  not  offensively  pres- 
ent in  all  of  his  writings.  Most  of  the  extreme  criticisms 
offered  have  been  based  upon  a  study  of  the  Rambler.  Up  to 
this  point,  the  criticism  is  just.  These  essays  contain  as  much 
of  this  foreign  caste  as  all  his  other  works  combined.  The 
author's  style  simplified  somewhat  as  he  went  on.  .  .  . 
In  '  Rasselas  '  much  of  the  crude  and  the  burly  style  of  the 
earlier  writings  gives  place  to  a  genuine  pathos,  while  in  the 
'  Lives  of  the  Poets  '  there  is  a  quality  of  diction  and  an  order 
of  structure  that  may  well  be  compared  to  that  of  any  pre- 
ceding writer.  .  .  .  His  diction  was  Latinic,  though  less 
and  less  [so]  as  his  style  advanced." — T.  W.  Hunt, 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

*'  That  affluence  and  power,  advantages  extrinsic  and  adventi- 
tious and  therefore  easily  separable  from  those  by  whom  they  are 
possessed,  should  very  often  flatter  the  mind  with  expectations  of 
felicity  which  they  cannot  give,  raises  no  astonishment." — Life  of 
Savage. 

"'Dear  Princess,' said  Rasselas,  'you  fall  into  the  common 
errors  of  exaggeratory  declamation,  by  producing,  in  a  familiar 
disquisition,  examples  of  national  calamities  and  scenes  of  exten- 
sive misery,  which  are  found  in  books  rather  than  in  the  world.'  " 
— Rasselas. 

"  I  sit  down,  in  pursuance  of  my  late  engagement,  to  recount 
the  remaining  part  of  the  adventures  that  befel  me  in  my  long 
quest  of  conjugal  felicity,  which,  though  I  have  not  yet  been  so 
happy  as  to  obtain  it,  I  have  at  least  endeavored  to  deserve  by 
unwearied  diligence,  without  suffering  from  repeated  disappoint- 
ments any  abatement  of  my  hope  or  repression  of  my  activity." 
—  The  Rambler. 

2.  Antithesis — Balance — Point. — "  His  composition 
is  full  of  antithesis ;  he  carefully  balances  the  thought,  limits 
it  on  this  side  and  on  that,  and  exhibits  it  in  various  rela- 
tions. An  exact  poise  of  ideas  and  correspondence  of  con- 


248  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

siderations  accompany  him  in  his  composition,  whether  it  be 
grave  or  humorous." — John  Bascom. 

"  Dr.  Johnson  is  .  .  .  .  a  complete  balance-master  in 
the  topics  of  morality.  He  never  encourages  hope,  but  he 
counteracts  it  by  fear  ;  he  never  elicits  a  truth,  but  he  sug- 
gests some  objection  in  answer  to  it.  ...  The  structure 
of  his  sentences,  which  was  his  own  invention,  and  which 
has  been  generally  imitated  since  his  time,  is  a  species  of 
rhyming  in  prose,  where  one  clause  answers  to  another 
in  measure  and  quantity,  like  the  tagging  of  syllables  at 
the  end  of  a  verse ;  the  close  of  the  period  follows  as 
mechanically  as  the  oscillation  of  a  pendulum  ;  the  sense  is 
balanced  with  the  sound  ;  each  sentence,  revolving  around  its 
centre  of  gravity,  is  contained  within  itself  like  a  couplet,  and 
each  paragraph  forms  itself  into  a  stanza." — Hazlitt. 

"  The  structure  of  the  sentences  is  compact,  though  they 
are  too  elaborately  balanced  and  stuffed  with  superfluous  an- 
tithesis."— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  None  has  more  generally  mutilated  the  flowing  liberty  of 
conversation  and  life  by  antithesis  and  technical  words.  .  .  . 
His  phraseology  rolls  ever  in  solemn  and  majestic  peri- 
ods, in  which  every  substantive  marches  ceremoniously,  ac- 
companied by  its  epithet ;  grand,  pompous  words  peal  forth 
like  an  organ  ;  every  proposition  is  set  forth  by  another  prop- 
osition of  equal  length  ;  thought  is  developed  with  the  com- 
passed regularity  and  official  splendor  of  a  procession."-  —  Taine. 

"The  often -remarked  mannerism  of  Johnson's  sentences 
.  .  .  consists  in  the  frequent  use  of  the  balanced  struct- 
ure. He  employs  liberally  all  the  arts  of  balance  both  in 
sound  and  in  sense.  In  '  The  Lives  of  the  Poets  '  he  is  much 
less  elaborate  and  sonorous  in  his  balances  than  in  the  Ram- 
bler. ...  In  this  work  ['  The  Lives  of  the  Poets  ']  bal- 
ances are  numerous,  but,  on  the  whole,  it  may  be  said  that 
in  these  the  cadence  is  more  varied,  and  that  we  have  a 
greater  proportion  of  curt,  short  sentences  and  balances. 


SAMUE-L  JOHNSON 

Such  balances  as  the  following  are  very  common — 
'  If  his  jests  are  coarse,  his  arguments  are  strong.' 
From  his  earliest  compositions  to  his  last,  Johnson  shows  a 
liking  for  strong  antithesis.  It  is  frequently  combined  with 
balance.  .  .  .  He  is  particularly  fond  of  antithesis  in 
his  succinct  expositions  of  character  and  style."  — Minto. 

"His  balanced  pomp  of  antithetic  clauses  soon  had  for 
others,  as  it  had  for  him,  an  irresistible  charm,  and  caused  a 
complete  revolution,  for  a  time,  in  English  style." — A.  H. 
Welsh. 

"A  fondness  for  balanced  periods  was  its  [his  diction's] 
special  characteristic.  .  .  .  The  measured  pace,  the 
constant  balance  of  the  style  becomes  quite  intolerable." — 
Brougham. 

"His  constant  practice  of  padding  out  a  sentence  with 
useless  epithets  till  it  became  as  stiff  as  the  bust  of  an  exqui- 
site ;  his  antithetical  forms  of  expression,  constantly  employed 
even  where  there  is  no  opposition  in  the  ideas  expressed  ;  his 
big  words  wasted  on  little  things ;  his  harsh  inversions,  so 
widely  different  from  those  graceful  and  easy  inversions  which 
give  variety,  spirit,  and  sweetness  to  the  expression  of  our 
great  old  writers — all  these  peculiarities  have  been  imitated 
by  his  admirers  and  parodied  by  his  assailants,  till  the  public 
has  become  sick  of  the  subject.  .  .  .  Many  readers  pro- 
nounced the  writer  a  pompous  pedant,  who  would  never  use 
a  word  of  two  syllables  where  it  was  possible  to  use  a  word 
of  six,  and  who  could  not  make  a  waiting-woman  relate  her 
adventures  without  balancing  a  noun  with  another  noun  and 
every  epithet  with  another  epithet." — Macaulay. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  That  this  general  desire  may  not  be  frustrated,  our  schools 
seem  yet  to  want  some  book,  which  may  excite  curiosity  by  its 
variety,  encourage  diligence  by  its  facility,  and  reward  applica- 
tion by  its  usefulness." — Preface  to  the  Preceptor. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

"  We  are  still  so  much  unacquainted  with  our  own  state  and  so 
unskilful  in  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  that  we  shudder  without 
danger,  complain  without  grievances,  and  suffer  our  quiet  to  be 
disturbed  and  our  commerce  to  be  interrupted  by  an  opposition 
to  the  government,  raised  only  by  interest  and  supported  only 
by  clamour,  which  yet  has  so  far  prevailed  upon  ignorance  and 
timidity  that  many  favour  it  as  reasonable  and  many  dread  it  as 
powerful." — The  False  Alarm. 

"  If  the  two  versions  are  compared,  perhaps  the  result  would 
be  that  Dryden  leads  his  reader  forward  by  his  general  vigor 
and  sprightliness,  and  Pitt  often  stops  him  to  contemplate  the 
excellence  of  a  single  couplet ;  that  Dryden's  faults  are  forgotten 
in  the  hurry  of  delight,  and  that  Pitt's  beauties  are  neglected  in 
the  languor  of  a  cold  and  listless  perusal  ;  that  Pitt  pleases  the 
critics  and  Dryden  the  people  ;  that  Pitt  is  quoted  and  Dryden 
read." — Lives  of  the  Poets. 

3.  Fondness  for  Philosophizing— Didacticism — 
Triteness. — "Johnson  was  extremely  fond  of  reducing 
everything  to  general  principles.  Few  writers  have  given  us 
so  many  moral  and  literary  maxims.  Instead  of  giving  ex- 
pression to  the  feelings  naturally  aroused  by  a  sublime  or  pa- 
thetic object,  he  is  '  paralyzed  by  his  tendency  to  moralize. ' 
Johnson,  it  must  be  confessed,  rather  abuses  the  moralist's 
privilege  of  being  commonplace.  He  descants  not  unfre- 
quently  upon  propositions  so  trite  that  even  the  most  earnest 
enforcement  can  give  them  little  interest.  With  all  draw- 
backs, however,  the  moralizing  is  the  best  part  of  the  Ram- 
bler. .  .  .  What  an  amazing  turn  it  [the  Rambler'}  shows 
for  commonplaces  !  That  life  is  short,  that  marriage  for  mer- 
cenary motives  produces  unhappiness,  that  different  men  are 
virtuous  in  different  degrees,  that  advice  is  generally  ineffect- 
ual, that  adversity  has  its  uses,  that  fame  is  liable  to  suffer 
from  detraction — these  and  a  host  of  other  such  maxims  are 
of  the  kind  upon  which  no  genius  and  no  depth  of  feeling 
can  confer  a  momentary  interest.  .  .  .  Johnson,  it  must 
be  said,  like  most  of  his  contemporaries,  considered  poetry  al- 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  2$ I 

most  exclusively  from  the  didactic  and  logical  point  of  view. 
He  always  inquires  what  is  the  moral  of  a  work  of  art.  John- 
son, it  must  be  confessed,  rather  abuses  the  moralist's  privilege 
of  being  commonplace.  He  descants  not  unfrequently  upon 
propositions  so  trite  that  even  the  most  earnest  enforcement 
can  give  them  little  interest.  With  all  drawbacks,  however,  the 
moralizing  is  the  best  part  of  the  Rambler." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"On  themes  of  sorrow,  as  on  themes  of  sublimity,  his 
power  to  move  is  paralyzed  by  his  constant  tendency  to  rea- 
son and  moralize.  Instead  of  sympathizing  with  distress,  he 
seems  to  ask  himself,  '  Is  distress  in  these  circumstances  rea- 
sonable?' .  .  .  Such  is  his  propensity  to  moralize  that 
the  events  in  his  biographies  seem  reduced  to  the  importance 
of  so  many  texts.  .  .  .  What  he  keeps  principally  in 
view  is  the  beneficial  effect  of  religious  belief  on  human  con- 
duct, laying  down  the  law  in  sonorous  dogmas.  In  the 
presence  of  objects  that  raise  emotions  of  sublimity  in  other 
men,  he  was  on  the  watch  to  lay  hold  of  general  rules.  In- 
stead of  giving  way  to  the  aesthetic  influences  of  the  situation, 
he  pondered  on  the  causes  or  the  moral  value  of  them,  and 
meditated  dictatorial,  high-sounding,  general  propositions. 
.  .  .  His  '  Rasselas  '  is  virtually  a  sermon  on  the  impos- 
sibility of  finding  perfect  happiness  in  the  world  ;  one  of  its 
professed  objects  is  the  benevolent  achievement  of  damping 
the  ardor  of  youth.  .  .  .  Though  called  the  Great  Mor- 
alist, he  expounded  nothing  that  could  be  called  an  ethical 
system.  He  simply  applied  strong  good  sense  to  the  common 
situations  of  life.  His  first  principles  were  understood,  not 
stated. — Minto. 

"  His  truths  are  too  true  ;  we  already  know  his  precepts  by 
heart.  We  learn  from  him  that  life  is  short  and  we  ought  to 
improve  the  few  moments  granted  to  us ;  that  a  mother  ought 
not  to  bring  up  her  son  as  a  fop  ;  that  a  man  ought  to  repent 
of  his  faults,  and  yet  avoid  superstition  ;  that  in  everything  we 
ought  to  be  active  and  not  hurried." — Taine. 


252  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

' '  Johnson  was  a  prophet  to  his  people ;  preached  a  gospel 
to  them — as  all  like  him  always  do.  The  highest  gospel 
he  preached  we  may  describe  as  a  kind  of  moral  prudence : 
4  in  a  world  where  much  is  to  be  done,  and  little  is  to  be 
known,'  see  how  you  will  doit\  .  .  .  Such  gospel  Johnson 
preached  and  taught — coupled,  theoretically  and  practically, 
with  this  other  great  gospel :  '  Clear  your  mind  of  cant !  '  " — 
Carlyle. 

"  The  Rambler  is  a  collection 'of  moral  essays,  or  scholas- 
tic theses,  written  on  set  subjects,  and  of  which  the  individ- 
ual characters  and  incidents  are  merely  artificial  illustrations, 
brought  in  to  give  a  pretended  relief  to  the  dryness  of  didactic 
discussion.  The  Rambler  is  a  splendid  and  imposing  com- 
mon-place book  of  general  topics  and  rhetorical  declamation 
on  the  conduct  and  business  of  human  life. " — Hazlitt. 

11  '  Rasselas '  is  less  a  novel  or  a  tale  than  a  series  of  John- 
sonian reflections  strung  on  a  thread  of  fictitious  narrative." 
— David  Mas  son. 

"  The  heik  and  burnoose  of  the  Eastern  prince  and  philos- 
opher cannot  conceal  the  old  brown  coat  and  worsted  stock- 
ings of  the  pompous  English  moralist." — Collier. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Contempt  is  a  kind  of  gangrene,  which,  if  it  seizes  one  part 
of  a  character,  corrupts  all  the  rest  by  degrees.  Blackmore, 
being  despised  as  a  poet,  was  in  time  neglected  as  a  physician  ; 
his  practice,  which  was  once  invidiously  great,  forsook  him  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  life."— Life  of  Blackmore. 

"  The  life  that  passes  in  penury  must  necessarily  pass  in  ob- 
scurity. It  is  impossible  to  trace  Fenton  from  year  to  year  or  to 
discover  what  means  he  used  for  his  support."— Life  of  Fenton. 

"  Truth,  such  as  is  necessary  to  the  regulation  of  life,  is  always 
found  where  it  is  honestly  sought.  Change  of  place  is  no  natural 
cause  of  the  increase  of  piety,  for  it  inevitably  produces  dissipa- 
tion of  mind." — Rasselas. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  253 

4.  Independence — Sincerity  —  Piety. — While  these 
terms  express  somewhat  different  ideas,  they  may  be  combined 
to  describe  one  of  Johnson's  most  prominent  characteristics. 
He  was  a  self-appointed  literary  dictator.  He  worshipped 
at  no  man's  shrine,  and  belonged  to  no  school  but  his  own. 
He  is  the  most  individual  writer  of  his  age.  To  the  last,  he 
persisted  in  speaking  his  own  thoughts  in  his  own  way.  By 
his  independent  force  of  character,  as  well  as  by  his  abilities, 
he  literally  compelled  the  homage  of  such  men  as  Goldsmith, 
Burke,  and  Reynolds.  Carlyle,  a  kindred  spirit,  calls  him 
"a  mass  of  genuine  manhood,  .  .  .  a  hard-struggling, 
weary-hearted  man,  having  in  him  the  element  of  heart-sin- 
cerity, and  preaching  his  great  gospel,  'Clear  your  mind  of 
cant !  '  Figure  him  there  with  his  scrofulous  diseases,  with  his 
great  greedy  heart,  and  unspeakable  chaos  of  thoughts  ;  stalk- 
ing mournful  as  a  stranger  in  this  earth,  .  .  .  the 
largest  soul  that  was  in  all  England ;  and  provision  made  for 
it  of  fourpence-halfpenny  a  day.  ...  So  much  left  un- 
developed in  him  to  the  last  :  in  a  kindlier  element  what 
might  he  not  have  been  !  "  His  famous  act  of  scornfully 
throwing  from  the  window  the  shoes  offered  him  in  charity, 
while  he  stood  with  feet  half-frozen  in  the  frosty  Oxford  hall, 
gives  the  key-note  to  his  whole  character  and  career.  To  quote 
Carlyle  again,  this  act  portrayed  "  an  original  man — not  a  sec- 
ond-hand, borrowing,  or  begging  man.  .  .  .  In  no  wise  a 
clothes-horse  or  patent  digester,  but  a  genuine  man."  Every- 
where Johnson  manifests  his  "  rooted  contempt  for  whining." 
His  independence  appears  especially  in  his  literary  criticisms. 
Sometimes,  as  in  his  strictures  upon  Milton's  "  Lycidas,"  his 
judgments  are  considered  outrageously  unjust;  but,  as  Stephen 
says  :  "  If  Johnson's  blunder  in  this  case  implied  sheer  stupid- 
ity, one  can  only  say  that  honest  stupidity  is  a  much  better 
thing  than  clever  insincerity  or  fluent  repetition  of  second- 
hand dogmas."  Whatever  other  faults  Samuel  Johnson  may 
have  had,  he  is  certainly  free  from  literary  servility. 


254  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

"  He  was  so  majestic  in  intellect,  so  honest  in  purpose,  so 
kind  and  pure  in  heart,  so  full  of  humour  and  reasonable  sweet- 
ness, and  yet  so  trenchant,  and  at  need  so  grim,  that  he  never 
sank  to  the  figure-head  of  a  clique,  nor  ever  lost  the  balance 
of  sympathy  with  readers  of  every  rank  and  age. 
The  charm  of  the  book  ['  Rasselas ']  is  its  humanity,  the 
sweetness  and  wholesomeness  of  the  long  melancholy  episodes, 
the  wisdom  of  the  moral  reflections  and  disquisitions." — Ed- 
mund Gosse.  , 

"A  noble,  heroic  nature  was  that  of  Samuel  Johnson,  be- 
yond all  controversy  ;  not  only  did  his  failings  lean  to  virtue's 
side — his  very  intellectual  weakness  and  prejudices  had  some- 
thing in  them  of  strength  and  greatness  ;  they  were  the  exu- 
berance and  excess  of  a  rich  mind,  not  the  stinted  growth  of  a 
poor  one.  There  was  no  touch  of  meanness  in  him  :  rude  and 
awkward  enough  he  was  in  many  points  of  mere  demeanor, 
but  he  had  the  soul  of  a  prince  in  real  generosity,  refinement, 
and  elevation.  .  .  .  The  spirit  of  his  philosophy  is  never 
other  than  manly  and  high-toned  as  well  as  moral." — G.  L. 
Craik. 

"  His  honesty  of  heart,  his  courageous  temper,  the  value  he 
set  on  things  outward  and  material,  might  have  made  him  a 
king  among  kings.  .  .  .  Once  for  all,  [he]  could  not 
and  would  not  believe,  much  less  speak  and  act,  a  falsehood  : 
the  form  of  sound  words,  which  he  held  fast,  must  have  a 
meaning  in  it.  Here  lay  the  difficulty:  to  behold  a  preten- 
tious mixture  of  truth  and  falsehood,  and  feel  that  he  must 
fight  them  ;  yet  to  love  and  defend  only  the  true.  ...  It 
does  not  appear  that  at  any  time  Johnson  was  what  we  call 
irreligious :  but  in  sorrows  and  isolation,  when  hope  died 
away,  and  only  a  long  vista  of  suffering  and  toil  lay  before  him 
to  the  end,  then  first  did  religion  shine  forth  in  its  meek,  ever- 
lasting clearness ;  even  as  the  stars  do  in  black  night,  which  in 
the  daytime  and  dusk  were  hidden  in  inferior  lights. 
How  Samuel  Johnson,  in  the  ear  of  Voltaire,  can  purify  and 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  255 

fortify  his  soul,  and  have  real  communion  with  the  highest, 
.  .  .  this  too  stands  all  unfolded  in  his  biography,  and  is 
among  the  most  touching  and  memorable  things  there.  .  .  . 
Johnson's  religion  was  the  light  of  life  to  him  ;  without  it  his 
heart  was  all  sick,  dark,  and  had  no  guidance  left.  .  . 
Such  was  Johnson's  life :  the  victorious  battle  of  a  free,  true 
man.  ...  In  spite  of  all  practical  shortcomings,  no  one 
that  sees  into  the  significance  of  Johnson  will  say  that  his 
prime  object  was  not  truth.  ...  In  his  writings  them- 
selves are  errors  enough,  crabbed  prepossessions  enough  ;  yet 
these  also  of  a  quite  extraneous  and  accidental  nature,  no- 
where a  wilful  shutting  of  the  eyes  to  truth.  .  .  .  Quite 
spotless  ...  is  Johnson's  love  of  truth,  if  we  look  at 
it  as  expressed  in  practice,  as  what  we  have  named  honesty  of 
action.  .  .  .  The  life  of  this  man  has  been,  as  it  were, 
turned  inside  out  and  examined  with  microscope  by  friend 
and  foe;  yet  was  there  no  lie  found  in  him.  His  doings  and 
writings  are  not  shows  but  performances  ;  you  may  weigh  them 
in  the  balance,  and  they  will  stand  weight.  Not  a  line,  not 
a  sentence  is  dishonestly  done,  is  other  than  it  pretends  to  be. 
.  Motive  for  writing  he  had  none,  as  he  often  said,  but 
money  ;  and  yet  he  wrote  so.  ...  Mark,  too,  how  little 
Johnson  boasts  of  his  sincerity.  He  has  no  suspicion  of  his 
being  particularly  sincere — of  his  being  particularly  any- 
thing !  He  does  not  engrave  truth  on  his  watch- 
seal;  no,  but  he  stands  by  truth,  speaks  by  it,  works  and 
lives  by  it.  ...  He  has  a  basis  of  sincerity;  unrecog- 
nized, because  never  questioned  or  capable  of  question. 
.  .  .  He  is  under  the  noble  necessity  of  being  true.  John- 
son's way  of  thinking  about  this  world  is  not  mine  any  more 
than  Mahomet's  was;  but  I  recognize  the  everlasting  element 
of  heart-sincerity  in  both  ;  and  see  with  pleasure  how  neither 
of  them  remains  ineffectual.  ...  I  find  in  Johnson's 
books  the  indisputablest  traces  of  a  great  intellect  and  great 
heart  —  ever  welcome,  under  what  obstructions  and  perver- 


256  SAMUEL   JOHNSON 

sions  soever.  They  are  sincere  words,  those  of  his  ;  he  means 
things  by  them." — Carlyle. 

' '  The  love  which  we  feel  for  Johnson  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  pivots  upon  which  his  life  turned  are  invariably  noble 
motives,  and  not  mere  obedience  to  customs.  .  .  .  How 
manly  the  self-respect  with  which  he  guarded  his  dignity, 
through  all  the  temptations  of  Grub  Street  !  .  .  .  John- 
son speaks  with  the  sincerity  of  a  man  drawing  upon  his  own 
experience.  .  .  .  He  was  no  man  to  be  put  off  with  mere 
phrases  in  place  of  opinions  or  to  accept  doctrines  which  were 
not  capable  of  expressing  genuine  emotions.  .  .  .  He  had 
the  rare  courage  ...  to  say  what  he  thought  as  forcibly 
as  he  could  say  it. " — Leslie  Stephen. 

"Amidst  prejudices  and  ridicule  he  has  a  deep  convic- 
tion, an  active  faith,  a  severe  moral  piety.  He  is  a  Christian 
from  his  heart  and  conscience,  reason  and  practice.  The 
thought  of  God,  the  fear  of  the  last  judgment,  engross  and  re- 
form him.  He  said  one  day  to  Garrick  :  '  I'll  come  no  more 
behind  your  scenes,  David,  for  the  silk  stockings  and  white 
bosoms  of  your  actresses  excite  my  amorous  propensities.' 
He  reproaches  himself  with  his  indolence,  implores  God's 
pardon,  is  humble,  has  scruples." — Taine. 

"  If,  indeed,  he  had  become  what  he  afterward  described 
as  one  of  the  lowest  of  all  human  beings,  a  scribbler  for  a 
party,  he  might  possibly  have  obtained  a  remunerative  occu- 
pation ;  but  Johnson  was  too  high-spirited  to  turn  his  pen  to 
such  vile  uses." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  His  sound  critical  power  and  elevated  feeling  are  well  ex- 
emplified in  the  prologue  spoken  at  the  opening  of  Drury 
Lane  Theatre  ;  and  there  is  true  greatness  of  spirit  in  his  pro- 
logue to  '  Comus. '  .  .  .  His  admirable  independence  of 
character  is  perhaps  even  better  seen  in  the  prologue  to  '  A 
Word  to  the  Wise.'  .  .  .  Nothing  can  be  better  than 
the  dignity  with  which  Johnson,  in  this  address,  indirectly 
reproves  them  [the  audience]  for  their  previous  disregard  of 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  257 

the  laws  of  humanity,  by  which  all  their  verdicts  ought  to  be 
determined . "  —  IV.  J.  Courthope. 

"He  represents  that  vast  army  of  electors  whom  neither 
canvasser  nor  caucus  has  ever  yet  cajoled  or  bullied  into  a 
polling-booth." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  He  was  full  of  gentle  kindness  and  humanity,  sweet  - 
heartedness,  good  sense,  bounti fulness,  and  hatred  of  what  was 
mean  and  contemptible ;  his  prejudices  and  his  rudeness  must 
all  be  overlooked  when  one  but  simply  glances  at  the  struggles, 
the  greatness,  and  the  goodness  of  the  man." — George  Daw- 
son. 

"  He  was  a  type,  standing  by  himself,  with  wonderful 
characteristics.  .  .  .  It  is  his  works  which  have  been 
made  immortal  by  him.  They  live  because  he  lives.  His 
fame  is  independent  of  them." — Hazlitt. 

"  Human  dignity  he  maintained,  ...  we  all  know 
how  well,  through  the  whole  long  and  arduous  struggle  of  his 
life. ' ' — Matthew  Arnold. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  has,  however,  so  much  kindness  for  me  that  he  advises 
me  to  consult  my  safety  when  I  talk  of  corporations.  I  know  not 
what  the  most  important  corporation  can  do,  becoming  manhood, 
by  which  my  safety  is  endangered.  My  reputation  is  safe,  for  I 
can  prove  the  fact ;  my  quiet  is  safe,  for  I  meant  well  ;  and  for 
any  other  safety,  I  am  not  to  be  very  solicitous." — The  Writ- 
ings and  Genius  of  Pope. 

"  To  walk  with  circumspection  and  steadiness  in  the  right 
path,  at  an  equal  distance  between  the  extremes  of  error,  ought 
to  be  the  constant  endeavour  of  every  reasonable  being  ;  nor  can 
I  think  those  teachers  of  moral  wisdom  much  to  be  honoured  as 
benefactors  to  mankind,  who  are  always  enlarging  upon  the  diffi- 
culties of  our  duties  and  providing  rather  excuses  for  vice  than 
incentives  to  virtue." — The  Rambler. 

"  But  I  have  no  design  to  gratify  pride  by  submission  or  malice 
by  lamentation  ;  nor  think  it  reasonable  to  complain  of  neglect 
'  '7 


2$8  SAMUEL   JOHNSON 

from  those  whose  regard  I  never  solicited.  If  I  have  not  been 
distinguished  by  the  distributors  of  literary  honors,  I  have  seldom 
descended  to  the  arts  by  which  favor  is  obtained.  I  have  seen 
the  meteors  of  fashion  rise  and  fall  without  any  attempt  to  add  a 
moment  to  their  duration.  ...  In  my  papers,  no  man  could 
look  for  censures  of  his  enemies  or  praises  of  himself." — The 
Rambler. 

5.  Gravity — Pomp — Heaviness. — In  the  closing  num- 
ber of  the  Rambler,  Johnson  says, '"  I  have  allotted  few  papers 
to  the  idle  sports  of  the  imagination."  While  Addison  wrote 
of  fops  and  fans,  Johnson  wrote  of  self-denial,  prudence,  and 
the  like.  His  friend,  Garrick,  called  him  "  a  tremendous 
companion. ' '  This  tendency  to  be  "  heavy ' '  appears  especially 
when  he  attempts  to  express  pathos  and  the  other  gentler  emo- 
tions. "  When  he  ventures  upon  such  topics,"  says  Stephen, 
"he  flounders  dreadfully,  and  rather  reminds  us  of  an  artist 
who  should  attempt  to  paint  miniatures  with  a  mop."  "  What 
most  distinguishes  Dr.  Johnson  from  other  writers,"  says 
Hazlitt,  "  is  the  pomp  and  uniformity  of  his  style.  All  his 
periods  are  cast  in  the  same  mould,  are  of  the  same  size  and 
shape.  .  .  .  He  condescends  to  the  familiar  till  we  are 
ashamed  of  our  interest  in  it ;  he  expands  the  little  till  it  looks 
big."  Taine  calls  him  "the  respectable,  the  tiresome  Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson." 

"Here  and  there,  the  pompous  utterance  invests  them 
[Johnson's  writings]  with  an  unlucky  air  of  absurdity.  . 
To  appreciate  fairly  the  strangely  cumbrous  form  of  his  written 
speech,  we  must  penetrate  more  deeply  than  may  at  first  sight 
seem  necessary  beneath  the  outer  rind  of  this  literary  Behemoth. 
.  No  critic  could  have  divined  his  power  from  the 
clumsy  gambols  in  which  he  occasionally  recreates  himself. 
Nor,  indeed,  does  his  pomposity  sink  to  mere 
verbiage  so  often  as  might  be  supposed.  It  is  by  no  means 
easy  to  translate  his  ponderous  phrases  into  simple  words  with- 
out losing  some  of  their  meaning.  .  .  .  His  written 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON  259 

style,  however  faulty  in  other  respects,  is  neither  slipshod 
nor  ambiguous.  .  .'  .  The  language  might  be  simpler,  but 
it  is  not  a  mere  sham  aggregation  of  words.  .  .  .  Omit- 
ting its  [the  Rambler*  s\  clumsy  attempts  at  occasional  levity, 
it  maybe  granted  that  in  its  ponderous  sentences  lies  buried  a 
great  mass  of  strong  sense  and  an  impressive  and  characteris- 
tic view  of  life.  .  .  .  With  all  its  faults  the  style  has  the 
merit  of  masculine  directness.  The  inversions  are  not  such 
as  to  complicate  the  construction.  As  Boswell  remarks,  he 
never  uses  a  parenthesis  ;  and  his  style,  though  ponderous  and 
wearisome,  is  as  transparent  as  the  master  snipsnap  of  Macau- 
lay.  .  .  .  His  style  acquired  something  of  the  old  elab- 
oration, though  the  attempt  to  conform  to  the  canons  of  a 
later  age  renders  the  structure  disagreeably  monotonous. 
His  tendency  to  pomposity  is  not  relieved  by  the  naivete  of 
spontaneity.  .  .  .  We  seem  to  see  a  man,  heavy-eyed, 
ponderous  in  his  gestures,  like  some  huge  mechanism  which 
grinds  out  a  ponderous  tissue  of  verbiage  as  heavy  as  it  is 
certainly  solid.  .  .  .  He  is  often  ponderous  and  ver- 
bose, and  one  feels  that  the  mode  of  expression  is  not  that 
which  is  most  congenial;  and  yet  the  vigor  of  thought  makes 
itself  felt  through  rather  clumsy  modes  of  utterance. 
The  Rambler  had  probably  a  more  lasting  success  than  any 
other  imitation  of  the  Spectator,  though  its  rare  modern 
readers  will  generally  consider  it  as  a  proof  of  the  amazing 
appetite  of  Johnson's  public  for  solid  sermonizing.  .  .  . 
From  this  time  Johnson  became  accepted  as  an  imposing 
moralist." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  In  writing  ...  his  style  becomes  artificial  and 
ponderous ;  the  whole  process  of  his  intellectual  exertion  loses 
much  of  its  elasticity  and  life.  .  .  .  Even  [the  essays  in] 
his  Rambler,  which  we  hold  to  be  the  most  indigestible  of 
his  productions,  are  none  of  them  mere  leather  or  prunello. 
The  pomposity  and  inflation  of  Johnson's  compo- 
sition abated  considerably  in  his  own  later  writing,  and,  as 


26O  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

the  cumbering  flesh  fell  off,  the  nerve  and  spirit  increased  ; 
the  most  happily  executed  parts  of  4  The  Lives  of  the  Poets  ' 
offer  almost  a  contrast  to  the  oppressive  rotundity  of  the 
Rambler,  produced  thirty  years  before." — G.  L.  Craik. 

4 '  Both  the  Rambler  and  the  Idler  are  now  found  to  be 
very  heavy  reading,  and  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  a 
considerable  portion  of  them  is  little  better  than  sonorous 
commonplace.  .  .  .  It  is  interesting  to  compare  John- 
son's ponderous  but  not  uninteresting  work  ['  Journey  to  the 
Hebrides ']  with  the  volume  in  which  Boswell  . 
gave  such  a  na'ive  and  amusing  account  of  the  adventures  and 
conversations  of  himself  and  his  great  companion. 
Johnson  has  not  the  lightness  of  hand  and  the  dexterity  of 
touch  which  enabled  Addison  to  treat  trivial  topics  gracefully 
and  appropriately,  and  when  he  aspires  to  do  so  he  generally 
fails  lamentably." — ff.J.  Nicoll. 

44  Whatever  the  work  be,  tragedy  or  dictionary,  biography 
or  essay,  he  always  writes  in  the  same  style.  .  .  .  Clas- 
sical prose  attains  its  perfection  in  him,  as  classical  poetry  in 
Pope.  Art  cannot  be  more  finished,  or  nature  more  forced. 
No  one  has  confined  ideas  in  more  strait  compartments  ;  none 
has  given  stronger  relief  to  dissertation  and  proof;  none  has 
imposed  more  despotically  on  story  and  dialogue  the  forms  of 
argumentation  and  violent  declamation.  ...  It  is  the 
completion  and  the  excess,  the  triumph  and  the  tyranny  of 
oratorical  style." — Taine. 

"  It  would  be  easy  to  select  from  Johnson's  writings  nu- 
merous passages  written  in  that  essentially  vicious  style  to 
which  the  name  Johnsonese  has  been  cruelly  given  ;  but  the 
searcher  could  not  fail  to  find  many  passages  guiltless  from 
this  charge.  The  characteristics  of  Johnson's  prose  style  are 
colossal  good  sense,  though  with  a  strong  sceptical  bias,  good 
humour,  vigorous  language,  and  a  movement  from  point  to 
point  which  can  only  be  compared  to  the  measured  tread  of 
a  well-drilled  company  of  soldiers. " — Augustine  Birrell. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  261 

"The  Rambler  is  'too  wordy,'  as  the  author  confessed; 
he  tried  to  be  a  little  lighter  in  manner  in  the  twenty-nine 
papers  he  contributed  in  1752  and  1753  to  Hawkesworth's 
Adventurer.  ...  In  these  two  short  compositions  ['  In- 
troduction to  Dictionary'  and  '  Letter  to  Lord  Chesterfield  '], 
in  each  of  which  the  author  is  singularly  moved,  his  Eng- 
lish, though  always  stately  and  formal,  is  lifted  out  of  the 
sesquipedalian  affectation  of  magnificence  which  has  amused 
the  world  so  much,  and  which  was  beyond  question  a  serious 
fault  of  Johnson's  style.  Here,  and  especially  in  the  '  Letter 
to  Chesterfield,'  he  is  simple,  terse,  and  thrilling,  and,  as  the 
occasion  was  a  private  one,  we  may  take  it  that  in  the  ex- 
traordinary fire  and  pungency  of  the  sentences  we  have  some- 
thing like  a  specimen  of  the  marvellous  power  of  conversation 
which  made  Johnson  the  wonder  of  his  age." — Edmund 
Gosse. 

"In  his  'Lives  of  the  Poets'  he  tried  hard  to  work  him- 
self out  of  the  sonorous  grandiloquence  of  the  Rambler. 
Perhaps  the  less  pompous  diction  of  his  later  pro- 
ductions is  partly  a  result  of  his  great  practice  in  conversation. 
As  we  have  just  said,  he  was  conscious  of  the  blemish  in  his 
Rambler  and  endeavored  to  amend.  .  .  .  The  Rambler 
certainly  is  a  very  ponderous  composition.  Reviewing  it 
himself  later  in  life,  he  shook  his  head  and  exclaimed  that  it 
was  '  too  wordy.'  The  heaviness  of  Johnson's  style  does  not 
arise  from  any  abstruseness  in  the  subject-matter.  The  Ram- 
bler took  up  mainly  subjects  suitable  for  light  reading.  The 
explanation  seems  to  be  that  his  ear  was  enamoured  of  a  meas- 
ured, ponderous  movement,  of  a  lofty  departure  from  the 
simple  pace  of  common  speech,  and  that  he  was  not  versa- 
tile enough  to  adopt  any  other,  even  when  this  was  flagrantly 
unsuitable  to  the  occasion.  .  .  .  Johnson's  style  is  sel- 
dom or  never  impassioned.  He  delivers  himself  with  severe 
majestical  dignity  and  vigorous  authoritative  brevity.  .  .  . 
The  magisterial  air  of  the  Rambler  probably  awed  many  into 


262  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

reading  him  with  respect  and  trying  to  profit  by  his  doctrine, 
but  the  dry,  abstract  character  of  the  exposition  must  have 
made  perusal  anything  but  a  labor  of  love." — Minto. 

"  When  he  talked  he  clothed  his  wit  and  his  sense  in  for- 
cible and  natural  expressions.  As  soon  as  he  took  his  pen  in 
his  hand  to  write  for  the  public,  his  style  became  systemati- 
cally vicious. — Macaulay. 

"  His  '  Letters  from  Correspondents,'  in  particular,  are 
more  pompous  and  unwieldy  than1  what  he  writes  in  his  own 
person.  .  .  .  The  fault  of  Dr.  Johnson's  style  is  that  it 
reduces  all  things  to  the  same  artificial  and  unmeaning  level. 
In  his  contributions  to  the  Adventurer,  the  Doctor 
uses  his  stilts  less;  he  walks  more — perhaps  occasionally  runs. 
Yet  majestic  diction  was  as  natural  to  a  man  who  thought  in 
rounded  periods  as  was  a  disjointed  chaos  of  the  parts  of 
speech  to  many  of  his  critics." — Hazlitt. 

"A  wondrous  buckram  style — the  best  he  could  get  to 
then  ;  a  measured  grandiloquence  stepping,  or  rather  stalking, 
along  in  a  very  solemn  way,  grown  obsolete  now;  sometimes 
a  tumid  size  of  phraseology  not  in  proportion  to  the  contents 
of  it  all — all  this  you  must  put  up  with." — Carlyle. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  the  last  Idler  is  published  in  that  solemn  week  which  the 
Christian  world  has  always  set  apart  for  the  examination  of  the 
conscience,  the  review  of  life,  the  extinction  of  earthly  desires, 
and  the  renovation  of  holy  purposes,  I  hope  that  my  readers  are 
already  disposed  to  view  every  incident  with  seriousness  and  im- 
prove it  by  meditation." — The  Idler. 

"  Behold,  Flirtilla,  at  thy  feet,  a  man  grown  gray  in  the  study 
of  those  noble  arts  by  which  right  and  wrong  may  be  confounded, 
and  caprice  and  appetite  instated  in  uncontrolled  command  and 
boundless  dominion  !  Sjich  a  casuist  may  surely  engage,  with 
certainty  of  success,  in  vindication  of  an  entertainment  which  in 
an  instant  gives  confidence  to  the  timorous  and  kindles  ardor  in 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  263 

the  cold  ;  an  entertainment  where  the  vigilance  of  jealousy  has  so 
often  been  eluded  and  the  virgin  is  set  free  from  the  necessity  of 
languishing  in  silence." — The  Rambler. 

"It  is  scarcely  possible,  in  the  regularity  and  composure  of 
the  present  time,  to  imagine  the  tumult  of  absurdity  and  clamor 
of  contradiction  which  perplexed  doctrine,  disordered  practice, 
and  disturbed  both  public  and  private  quiet  in  that  age  where 
subordination  was  broken  and  awe  was  hissed  away  ;  when  any 
unsettled  innovator,  who  could  hatch  a  half-formed  nation,  pro- 
duced it  to  the  public  ;  when  every  man  might  become  a  preach- 
er, and  almost  every  preacher  could  collect  a  congregation." 
—Life  of  Butler. 

"  The  spirit,  volatile  and  fiery,  is  the  Pope's  emblem  of  vivac- 
ity and  wit  ;  the  acidity  of  the  lemon  will  very  aptly  figure  pun- 
gency of  raillery  and  acrimony  of  censure  ;  sugar  is  the  natural 
representative  of  luscious  adulation  and  gentle  complaisance  ; 
and  water  is  the  proper  hieroglyphic  of  easy  prattle,  innocent  and 
tasteless." — The  Rambler. 

6.  Melancholy — Despondency. — All  Johnson's  writ- 
ings are  tinged  with  a  hue  of  melancholy.  In  his  best  known 
poem,  "  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,"  he  sounds  the  key- 
note of  all  his  works.  To  him  this  earth  is  ever  a  place 

"  Where  wavering  man,  betrayed  by  venturous  pride 
To  tread  the  dreary  paths  without  a  guide, 
As  treacherous  phantoms  in  the  mist  delude, 
Shuns  fancied  ills  or  chases  airy  good." 

"  He  had  to  go  about,"  says  Carlyle,  "girt  with  continual 
hypochondria,  physical  and  spiritual  pain — like  a  Hercules 
with  the  burning  Nessus-shirt  on  him."  The  melancholy  cast 
of  Johnson's  mind  appears  especially  in  "  Rasselas,"  com- 
posed, as  it  was,  in  solitude  and  sorrow. 

"The  melancholy  which   colors  it  [the  Rambler\  is   the 
melancholy  of  a  noble  nature.      .      .     .     His  melancholy  is 
distinguished   from  that  of  feebler  men    by  the   strength    of 
the  conviction  that  '  it  will  do  no  good  to  whine.' 
The  evils  of  life  were  too  deeply  seated  to  be  caused  or  cured 


264  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

by  kings  or  demagogues.  .  .  .  His  melancholy  is  not 
so  heavy-eyed  and  depressing  in  his  talk,  for  we  catch  him  at 
moments  of  excitement ;  but  it  is  there,  and  sometimes  breaks 
out  emphatically  and  unexpectedly.  The  prospect  of  death 
often  clouds  his  mind,  and  he  bursts  into  tears  when  he 
thinks  of  his  past  sufferings.  .  .  .  Johnson  has  some- 
thing in  common  with  the  fashionable  pessimism  of  modern 
times.  No  sentimentalist  of  to-day  could  be  more  convinced 
that  life  is  in  the  main  miserable.  ,It  was  his  favorite  theory, 
according  to  Mrs.  Thrale,  that  all  human  action  was  prompted 
by  the  vacuity  of  life.  Men  act  solely  in  the  hope  of  escaping 
themselves.  Evil  ...  is  the  positive,  and  good  merely 
the  negative  of  evil.  All  desire  is  at  bottom  an  attempt 
to  escape  from  pain.  .  .  .  He  differs  from  most  modern 
sentimentalists  in  having  the  most  hearty  contempt  for  useless 
whining.  If  he  dwells  upon  human  misery,  it  is  because  he 
feels  that  it  is  as  futile  to  join  with  the  optimist  in  ignoring  as 
with  the  pessimist  in  howling  over  the  evil.  We  are  in  a  sad 
world,  full  of  pain,  but  we  have  to  make  the  best  of  it.  Stub- 
born patience  and  hard  work  are  the  sole  remedies,  or  rather 
the  sole  means  of  temporary  escape.  Much  of  the  Rambler  is 
occupied  with  variations  upon  this  theme,  and  expresses  the 
kind  of  dogged  resolution  with  which  he  would  have  us  plod 
through  this  weary  world.  .  .  .  Johnson  is  impressed  by 
a  deep  sense  of  the  evils  under  which  humanity  suffers,  and 
forcibly  rejects  the  superficial  optimism  of  the  day.  Men,  he 
tells  us  over  and  over,  are  wretched,  and  there  is  no  use  in  de- 
nying it.  ...  We  are  almost  appalled  by  the  gloomy 
strength  which  sees  so  forcibly  the  misery  of  the  world  and 
rejects  so  unequivocally  all  the  palliatives  of  sentiment  and 
philosophy." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  There  is  a  pathetic  air  of  gloomy  melancholy  about  1m 
sonorous  reflections  on  the  vanity  of  human  wishes.      .f    . 
But  though  he  is  said  to  '  bewail  his  miseries  with  eloquence,' 
his  lamentations  are  not  very  touching." — Minto. 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON  265 

"  This  element  [didacticism]  was  undoubtedly  deepened 
by  his  natural  seriousness  of  mind,  often  tinged  with  melan 
choly.  Had  it  not  been  for  this  inherited  despondency,  his 
large  nature  might  have  been  healthfully  tender  and  his  style 
impassioned.  .  .  .  His  extreme  poverty  and  strong 
tendencies  to  melancholy  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  attain 
to  anything  like  a  spacious  and  healthful  view  of  life." — 
T.  W.  Hunt. 

' '  And  so  the  story  [  '  Rasselas  '  ]  rolls,  pathetic  and 
gloomy,  like  a  bit  of  the  Black  Sea." — David  Masson. 

"  Then  followed  '  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,'  contain- 
ing, in  dignified  and  impressive  verse,  a  declaration  of  John- 
son's profound  and  life-long  conviction  that,  upon  the  whole, 
the  amount  of  misery  in  the  world  is  greatly  in  excess  of  the 
amount  of  happiness.  .  .  .  It  [  '  Rasselas '  ]  is  a  dis- 
course on  his  old  theme,  '  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,' 
eloquently  and  powerfully  written  and  bearing  everywhere 
the  marks  of  that  gloom  approaching  to  despair  with  which  he 
habitually  contemplated  life." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  There  appears  before  us  a  man  with  a  gloomy  and  un- 
polished air,  .  .  .  suffering  from  morbid  melancholy 
since  his  birth,  and  moreover  a  hypochondriac." — Taine. 

"  Fits  of  morbid  melancholy  often  seized  him,  which,  as  he 
says,  '  kept  him  mad  half  his  life.'  Penniless,  .  .  .  and 
touched  with  terrible  insanity,  the  youth  stood  looking  out 
upon  a  world  that  seemed  all  cold  and  bare  and  friendless  to 
his  gaze." — W.  F.  Collier. 

"  We  see  in  it  ['  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes  ']  the  mel- 
ancholy that  darkened  all  his  view  of  human  existence." — 
W.  J.  Coiirthope. 

"  He  was  melancholy  almost  to  madness,  '  radically  wretch- 
ed,' indolent,  blinded,  diseased." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  He  had  king's  evil,  he  was  purblind,  he  inherited  the 
germs  of  many  diseases,  and  was  of  a  most  melancholy  tem- 
perament."—  George  Dawson. 


266  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

"His  '  Rasselas  '  is  the  most  melancholy  and  debilitating 
moral  speculation  that  ever  was  put  forth." — Hazlitt. 

"  A  deep  melancholy  took  possession  of  him,  and  gave  a 
dark  tinge  to  all  his  views  of  human  nature  and  of  human 
destiny. " — Macaulay. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When  we  take  the  most  distant  prospect  of  life,  what  does  it 
present  to  us  but  a  chaos  of  unhappiness,  a  confused  and  tumult- 
uous scene  of  labor  and  contest,  disappointment  and  defeat  ?  If 
we  view  past  ages  in  the  reflection  of  history,  what  do  they  offer 
to  our  meditation  but  crimes  and  calamities  ?  One  year  is  dis- 
tinguished by  a  famine,  another  by  an  earthquake  :  kingdoms 
are  made  desolate,  sometimes  by  war  and  sometimes  by  pesti- 
lence ;  the  peace  of  the  world  is  interrupted  at  one  time  by  the 
caprices  of  a  tyrant,  at  another  by  the  rage  of  the  conqueror. 
The  memory  is  stored  only  with  vicissitudes  of  evil ;  and  the 
happiness,  such  as  it  is,  of  one  part  of  mankind,  is  found  to 
arise  commonly  from  sanguinary  success,  from  victories  which 
confer  upon  them  the  power  not  so  much  of  improving  life 
by  any  new  enjoyment  as  of  inflicting  misery  on  others  and 
gratifying  their  own  pride  by  comparative  greatness." — The 
Adventurer. 

"  But  as  we  advance  forward  into  the  crowds  of  life,  innumer- 
able delights  solicit  our  inclinations,  and  innumerable  cares 
distract  our  attention  ;  the  time  of  youth  is  passed  in  noisy  frol- 
ics ;  manhood  is  led  on  from  hope  to  hope  and  from  project  to 
project  ;  the  dissoluteness  of  pleasure,  the  inebriation  of  success, 
the  ardour  of  expectation,  and  the  vehemence  of  competition  chain 
down  the  mind  alike  to  the  present  scene,  nor  is  it  remembered 
how  soon  this  mist  of  trifles  must  be  scattered  and  the  bubbles 
that  float  upon  the  rivulet  of  life  be  lost  forever  in  the  gulf  of 
eternity." —  The  Idler. 

"  'The  Europeans,'  answered  Imlac,  '  are  less  unhappy  than 
we  ;  but  they  are  not  happy.  Human  life  is  everywhere  a  state 
in  which  much  is  to  be  endured  and  little  to  be  enjoyed.' " — 
Rasselas. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  267 

7.  Sturdy  Conservatism  —  Intolerance  —  Preju- 
dice.— "  For  him,"  says  Hazlitt,  "'  out  of  the  pale  of  estab- 
lished authority  and  received  dogmas,  all  is  sceptical,  loose, 
and  desultory." 

His  pamphlet  Taxation  no  Tyranny  expresses  the  very 
essence  of  British  prejudice  against  the  principles  involved  in 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  Minto  observes  that  he 
"could  not  repress  his  political  leanings  even  in  writing  the 
definitions  for  his  Dictionary,"  and  adds  that,  "  when  writ- 
ing the  Parliamentary  debates  for  the  Gentleman' s  Magazine, 
he  took  care  that  '  the  Whig  dogs  should  not  have  the  best  of 
it.'  '  He  hated  dissenters  as  "  honestly  "  as  he  hated 
Whigs,  infidels,  Frenchmen,  and  Scotchmen.  He  once  re- 
marked that,  for  all  he  could  see,  all  foreigners  were  fools. 

"  Conservative  in  politics  and  religion,  he  was  called  the 
Hercules  of  Toryism,  and  declared  that  the  first  Whig  was  the 
Devil.  He  thought  Rousseau  to  be  the  prince  of  felons,  and 
could  hardly  settle  the  proportion  of  iniquity  between  him 
and  Voltaire.  .  .  .  He  was  never  able  to  divest  himself 
entirely  of  prejudice,  and  the  definitions  [in  his  Dictionary] 
which  betray  his  personal  feelings  and  peculiarities  are  amus- 
ing."—^. H.  Welsh. 

"  That  Johnson,  in  spite  of  all  drawbacks,  adopted  the  con- 
servative side ;  stationed  himself  as  the  unyielding  opponent 
of  innovation,  resolute  to  hold  fast  the  form  of  sound  words, 
could  not  but  increase,  in  no  small  measure,  the  difficulties  he 
had  to  strive  with.  ...  To  resist  innovation  is  easy 
enough  on  one  condition  :  that  you  resist  inquiry.  This  is, 
and  was,  the  common  expedient  of  your  common  Conserva- 
tive ;  but  this  would  not  do  for  Johnson.  .  .  .  The  last 
in  many  things,  Johnson  was  the  last  genuine  Tory  ;  the  last 
of  Englishmen  who,  with  strong  voice  and  wholly  believing 
heart,  preached  the  doctrine  of  standing  still ;  who,  without 
selfishness  or  slavishness,  reverenced  the  existing  powers  ; 
who  had  heart-devoutness  with  heart-hatred  of  cant 


268  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

— was  orthodox-religious  with  his  eyes  open.  .  .  .  John- 
son's aim  was  in  itself  an  impossible  one:  this  of  stemming 
the  eternal  flood  of  time;  of  clutching  all  things  and  an- 
choring them  down  and  saying,  '  Move  not  !  ' — how  could  or 
should  it  ever  have  success  ?  .  The  essence  of  origi- 

nality is  not  that  it  be  new ;  Johnson  believed  altogether  in 
the  old ;  he  found  the  old  opinions  credible  for  him,  fit  for 
him  ;  and  in  a  right  heroic  manner  lived  under  them.  . 
He  stood  by  the  old  formulas  ;  the  happier  was  it  for  him  that 
he  could  so  stand  ;  but  in  all  formulas  that  he  could  stand  by 
there  needed  to  be  a  most  genuine  substance.  .  .  .  From 
Johnson's  strength  of  affection  we  deduce  many  of  his  pecu- 
liarities, especially  that  threatening  array  of  perversions  known 
under  the  name  of  'Johnson's  Prejudices.'  .  .  .  Those 
evil-formed  prejudices  ot  his,  that  Jacobitism,  Church-of-Eng- 
landism,  hatred  of  the  Scotch,  belief  in  witches,  and  such  like — 
what  were  they  but  ordinary  beliefs  of  well-doing,  well-meaning 
provincial  Englishmen  of  that  day?  .  .  .  Admire  here 
this  other  contradiction  in  the  life  of  Johnson;  that,  though  the 
most  ungovernable  and  in  practice  the  most  independent  of 
men,  he  must  be  a  Jacobite  and  worshipper  of  the  Divine 
Right.  .  .  .  Touch  his  religion,  glance  at  the  Church  of 
England,  or  the  Divine  Right,  and  he  was  upon  you  !  These 
things  were  his  symbols  of  all  that  was  good  and  precious  for 
men ;  his  very  Ark  of  the  Covenant ;  whoso  laid  hand  on  them 
-tore  asunder  his  heart  of  hearts.  Not  out  of  hatred  to  the 
opponent  but  of  love  to  the  things  opposed  did  Johnson  grow 
cruel,  fiercely  contradictory." — Carlyle. 

"  His  conservatism  may  be  at  times  obtuse,  but  it  is  never 
of  the  cynical  variety.  ...  He  holds  his  own  belief 
with  so  vigorous  a  grasp  that  all  argumentative  devices  for 
loosening  it  seem  to  be  thrown  away.  .  .  .  His  tenacious 
conservatism  caused  him  to  cling  to  decaying  materials,  for 
the  want  of  anything  better,  and  he  has  suffered  the  natural 
penalty.  .  .  .  Nothing,  indeed,  can  be  truer  than  that 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  269 

Johnson  cared  very  little  for  the  new  gospel  of  the  rights  of 
man.  .  .  .  [To  him]  the  natural  equality  of  man  was 
mere  moonshine.  So  far  is  this  from  being  true,  he  says,  that 
not  two  people  can  be  together  for  half  an  hour  without  one 
acquiring  an  evident  superiority  over  the  other.  Subordina- 
tion is  an  essential  element  to  human  happiness.  .  .  .  His 
hatred  of  the  Americans  was  complicated  by  his  hatred  of 
slave-owners.  .  .  .  The  attack  upon  the  Americans  is 
arrogant  and  offensive.  Although  Mr.  Hill  truly  points  out 
that  Johnson's  dislike  to  America  was  associated  with  his 
righteous  hatred  of  slavery  and  consequent  prejudice  against 
the  planters,  it  is  equally  true  that  he  states  the  English 
claims  in  the  most  illiberal  and  irritating  fashion.  .  .  . 
His  massive  and  keenly  logical,  but  narrow  and  rigid  intel- 
lect was  the  servant  of  strong  passions,  of  prejudices  imbibed 
through  early  associations,  and  of  the  constitutional  melan- 
choly which  made  him  a  determined  pessimist.  .  .  .  His 
Toryism  and  high-churchmanship  had  become  part  of  his  nat- 
ure. .  .  .  Whiggism  is  vile,  according  to  the  Doctor's 
phrase,  because  Whiggism  is  '  a  negation  of  all  principle  ; '  it 
is,  in  his  view,  not  so  much  the  preference  of  one  form  to  an- 
other, as  an  attack  upon  the  vital  condition  of  all  government. 
He  called  Burke  '  a  bottomless  Whig,'  in  this  sense,  implying 
that  Whiggism  meant  anarchy.  .  .  .  This  dogged  con- 
servatism has  both  its  value  and  its  grotesque  side. 
Loving  authority,  and  holding  one  authority  to  be  as  good  as 
another,  he  defended  with  uncompromising  zeal  the  most  pre- 
posterous and  tyrannical  measures.  The  pamphlets  against 
the  Wilkesite  agitators  and  the  American  rebels  are  little  more 
than  a  huge  rhinoceros  snort  of  contempt  against  all  who  are 
fools  enough  or  wicked  enough  to  promote  war  and  disturb- 
ance in  order  to  change  one  form  of  authority  for  another." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  He  was,  as  a  politician,  half  ice  and  half  fire.     On  the 
side  of  his  intellect  he  was  far  too   apathetic  about   public 


2/O  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

affairs,  far  too  sceptical  as  to  the  good  or  evil  tendency  of  any 
form  of  polity.  His  passions,  on  the  contrary,  were  violent, 
even  to  slaying,  against  all  who  leaned  to  Whiggish  prin- 
ciples. ...  In  Scotland  he  thought  it  his  duty  to  pass 
months  without  joining  in  public  worship,  solely  because  the 
ministers  of  the  kirk  had  not  been  ordained  by  bishops." 
— Macaulay. 

'•  Johnson  was  a  grand  conservative;  nature  and  inclina- 
tion made  him  so.  He  was  born'a  worshipper  of  govern- 
ments. .  .  .  Johnson  leaned  strongly  to  conservatism, 
perhaps  too  strongly ;  but  it  was  ever  visible  in  all  his  actions 
that  he  disliked  despotism.  .  .  .  They  [people]  imagine 
that  Johnson  was  entirely  composed  of  wisdom,  and  that  he 
was  nothing  but  a  dictionary  of  aphorisms.  He  was  no  such 
thing.  He  was  a  great  hungry  man,  with  hot  blood,  strong 
passions,  odd  ways,  queer  likings  and  dislikes,  and  mountain- 
ous prejudices.  .  .  .  Yet  this  man — a  man  of  gigantic 
prejudices  and  strong  dislikes,  who,  if  he  did  not  like  a  man, 
found  it  difficult  to  do  him  justice — took  the  very  work  in 
hand  ['  Lives  of  the  Poets  ']  and  did  it  as  no  other  man  could 
have  done  it." — George  Dawson. 

"  'If,'  said  he,  '-I  saw  a  Whig  and  a  Tory  drowning,  I 
would  first  save  the  Tory  :  and  when  I  saw  he  was  safe,  not 
till  then.  I  would  go  and  help  the  Whig ;  but  the  dog  should 
duck  first,  the  dog  should  duck,'  laughing  with  pleasure  at 
the  thought  of  the  Whig's  ducking." — Cary. 

"  He  was  a  high  Tory  and  a  high  churchman  in  all  con- 
troversies respecting  the  state.  The  Established  Church,  the 
established  government,  the  established  order  of  things  in 
general,  found  in  him  an  unflinching  supporter." — Brougham. 

"  He  was  a  strong  force  of  conservation  and  concentra- 
tion, in  an  epoch  which  by  its  natural  tendencies  seemed 
moving  toward  expansion  and  freedom." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  I  hold  Johnson  to  be  the  great  supporter  of  the  British 
monarchy  and  Church  during  the  last  age — better  than  whole 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON  2/1 

benches  of  bishops,  better  than  Pitts,  Norths,  and  the  great 
Burke  himself.  Johnson  had  the  ear  of  the  nation;  his  im- 
mense authority  reconciled  it  to  loyalty  and  shamed  it  out  of 
irreligion. ' ' — Thackeray. 

"  All  these  pamphlets  [in  The  False  Alarm]  show 
Johnson's  unusual  vigor  of  style,  his  unbending  Toryism, 
and  his  utter  incapacity  to  take  a  candid  and  impartial 
view  of  a  political  controversy.  '  Taxation  No  Tyranny ' 
is  a  very  characteristic  production.  Even  George  III.  could 
have  desired  no  more  strenuous  and  unreasoning  support 
of  the  right  of  Great  Britain  to  tax  American  colonies." 
— H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  His  naturally  powerful  reason  was  a  good  deal  clouded 
by  various  prejudices.  He  would  believe  no  good  either  of 
republican  or  of  infidel.  He  did  injustice  to  Milton  ;  he 
abused  Bolingbroke  without  reading  him ;  and  Boswell  men- 
tions his  having  uttered  about  Hume  a  remark  too  gross  to  be 
committed  to  paper.  He  hated  and  ridiculed  the  French  and 
the  Scotch,  and  refused  to  be  persuaded  that  anybody  could 
live  happily  out  of  London.  In  these  things,  as  in  many 
others,  he  showed  gross  egotism  and  want  of  sympathy.  .  .  . 
He  was  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  coriciliate  opposition, 
and  his  strong  powers  of  argument  were  warped  by  prejudice. 
His  'Taxation  no  Tyranny  '  .  .  .  is  at  once  overbearing 
and  sophistical.  It  might  inflame  and  embitter  partisans, 
but  it  was  too  abusive  and  too  unreasonable  to  make  con- 
verts."— Minto. 

"  He  had  his  prejudices  and  his  intolerant  feelings  ;  but  he 
suffered  enough  in  the  conflict  of  his  own  mind  with  them. 
His  were  not  time-serving,  heartless,  hypercritical 
prejudices,  but  deep,  inwoven,  not  to  be  rooted  out  but 
with  life  and  hope — prejudices  which  he  found  from  old  habit 
necessary  to  his  own  peace  of  mind,  and  thought  so  to  the 
peace  of  mankind.  .  .  .  They  were  between  himself  and 
his  conscience." — Hazlitt. 


272  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  were  a  curious  but  an  idle  speculation  to  inquire  what  ef- 
fect these  dictators  of  sedition  expect  from  the  dispersion  of  their 
Letter  among  us.  If  they  believe  their  own  complaints  of  hard- 
ship, and  really  dread  the  danger  which  they  describe,  they  will 
naturally  hope  to  communicate  the  same  perceptions  of  their  fel- 
low-subjects. But  probably  in  America,  as  in  other  places,  the 
chiefs  are  incendiaries,  that  hope  to  fob  in  the  tumults  of  a  con- 
flagration and  toss  brands  among  a  rabble  passively  combustible. 
Those  who  wrote  the  Address,  though  they  have  shown  no  great 
extent  of  profundity  of  mind,  are  yet  probably  wiser  than  to  be- 
lieve it :  but  they  have  been  taught  by  some  master  of  mischief 
how  to  put  in  motion  the  engine  of  political  electricity ;  to  attract 
by  the  sounds  of  Liberty  and  Property,  to  repel  by  those  of 
Popery  and  Slavery,  and  to  give  the  great  stroke  by  the  name  of 
Boston." — Taxation  no  Tyranny. 

"A  few  weeks  will  show  whether  the  government  can  be 
shaken  by  empty  noise,  and  whether  the  faction  which  depends 
upon  its  influence  has  not  deceived  alike  the  public  and  itself. 
That  it  should  have  continued  until  now,  is  sufficiently  shameful. 
None  can  indeed  wonder  that  it  has  been  supported  by  the  sec- 
taries, the  natural  fomenters  of  sedition  and  confederates  of  the 
rabble,  of  whose  religion  little  now  remains  but  hatred  of  estab- 
lishments, and  who  are  angry  to  find  separation  now  only  toler- 
ated which  was  once  rewarded  :  but  every  honest  man  must  la- 
ment that  it  has  been  regarded  with  frigid  neutrality  by  the 
Tories,  who,  being  long  accustomed  to  signalize  their  principles 
by  opposition  to  the  court,  do  not  yet  consider  that  they  have  at 
last  a  king  [George  III.]  who  knows  not  the  name  of  party,  and 
who  wishes  to  be  the  common  father  of  all  his  people." — The 
False  Alarm. 

"  We  have  found  by  experience  that  though  ...  a  bor- 
ough has  been  compelled  to  see  its  dearest  interest  in  the  hands 
of  him  whom  it  did  not  trust,  yet  the  general  state  of  the  nation 
has  continued  the  same.  The  sun  has  risen  and  the  corn  has 
grown  and  whatever  talk  has  been  of  the  danger  of  property,  yet 
he  that  ploughed  the  field  commonly  reaped  it,  and  he  that  built 
a  house  was  master  of  the  door  :  the  vexation  excited  by  injus- 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  273 

tice  suffered,  or  supposed  to  be  suffered,  by  any  pri%'ate  man  or 
single  community,  was  local  and  temporary  ;  it  neither  spread 
far  nor  lasted  long." — The  False  Alarm. 

8.  Brusqueness—  Harshness. — Johnson's  thirty  years' 
struggle  with  want  combined  with  his  naturally  splenetic 
temper  to  make  him,  at  times,  very  harsh  and  unqualified  in 
his  criticisms.  "  One  of  his  favorite  methods  of  argument," 
says  Grant,  "  was  a  flat  denial  of  his  opponent's  statements, 
and  he  considered  that  treating  an  adversary  with  respect  was 
giving  him  an  advantage  to  which  he  was  not  entitled." 
His  own  strength — mental,  moral,  and  spiritual — made  him 
very  unsympathetic  toward  what  he  considered  the  weaknesses 
of  his  associates.  Taine,  with  characteristic  French  dislike  of 
such  a  character,  calls  Johnson  "  a  bear  with  the  manners  of  a 
beadle  and  the  inclinations  of  a  constable."  In  his  humor, 
as  in  his  satire,  he  is  broad  and  personal.  As  Stephen  puts 
it,  "  He  judges  by  his  intuitive  aversions."  Boswell  said  of 
him:  "  He  is  through  your  body  in  an  instant,  without  any 
preliminary  parade  ;  he  gives  a  deadly  lunge,  but  cares  little 
for  skill  of  fence."  Shaw  fairly  accounts  for  this  trait  in 
Johnson,  saying,  "When,  weary  and  lame,  he  reached  the 
top  of  the  ladder  by  which  he  had  climbed  from  poverty  and 
obscurity  to  competence  and  fame,  he  had  brought  with  him 
the  begrimed  and  offensive  manners  of  his  underground  life." 

"  We  know  that  he  puffed  and  grunted,  and  contradicted 
everybody,  reviling  as  fools  and  blockheads  and  barren  ras- 
cals all  who  dared  to  differ  from  his  literary  highness." — 
W.  F.  Collier. 

11  This  element  [gravity]  at  times  showed  itself  in  the  ex- 
treme form  of  rudeness  bordering  on  severity.  Mrs.  Boswell 
spoke  of  him  to  her  husband  as  a  '  bear  '  in  his  manners. 
Now  and  then  his  style  had  this  bearish  quality.  There  is  a 
brusque  and  harsh  tone  about  it  that  grates  upon  the  ear. 
The  sage  of  Lichfield  had  a  good  deal  of  the  animal  in  his 
18 


2/4  SAMUEL   JOHNSON 

nature,  and  it  often  ruled  the  other  elements.  When  thus 
exercised  he  would  indulge  in  the  most  cruel  invective  and 
spare  no  feelings  whatsoever." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

"  He  treated  those  whose  opinions  had  an  opposite  inclina- 
tion with  little  tolerance  and  no  courtesy." — Brougham. 

"  There  is  no  arguing  with  Johnson,  for  if  his  pistol  misses 
fire,  he  knocks  you  down  with  the  butt  end  of  it." — Gold- 
smith. 

"If  he  did  not  always  think  what  he  felt,  he  always  said 
what  he  thought." — Hazlitt. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Authoresses  are  seldom  famous  for  clean  linen,  therefore 
they  cannot  make  laundresses  ;  they  are  rarely  skilful  at  their 
needle,  and  cannot  mend  a  soldier's  shirt  ;  they  will  make  bad 
sutlers,  being  not  much  accustomed  to  eat.  I  must  therefore 
propose  that  they  shall  form  a  regiment  of  themselves  and  garri- 
son the  town  which  is  supposed  to  be  in  most  danger  of  a  French 
invasion.  They  will  probably  have  no  enemies  to  encounter  ; 
but,  if  they  are  once  shut  up  together,  they  will  soon  disencum- 
ber the  public  by  tearing  out  the  eyes  of  one  another.'' — Employ- 
ment of  Authors. 

"  In  this  poem  there  is  no  nature,  for  there  is  no  truth  ;  there 
is  no  art,  for  there  is  nothing  new.  Its  form  is  that  of  a  pasto- 
ral ;  easy,  vulgar,  and  therefore  disgusting  ;  whatever  images  it 
can  supply  are  long  ago  exhausted  ;  and  its  inherent  improbabil- 
ity always  forces  dissatisfaction  on  the  mind.  .  .  .  It  is  not 
to  be  considered  as  the  effusion  of  real  passion  ;  for  passion  runs 
not  after  remote  allusions  and  obscure  opinions.  Passion  plucks 
no  berries  from  the  myrtle  and  ivy,  nor  calls  upon  Arethuse  and 
Mincius,  nor  tells  of  rough  satyrs  and  '  fauns  with  cloven  heel.' 
Where  there  is  leisure  for  fiction  there  is  little  grief." — Criticism 
on  Milton's  Lycidas. 

"There  are  so  many  competitors  for  the  fame  of  cleanliness 
that  it  is  not  hard  to  gain  information  of  those  that  fail  from 
those  that  desire  to  excel :  I  quickly  found  that  Nitella  passed 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  2/5 

her  time  between  finery  and  dirt,  and  was  always  in  a  wrapper, 
night-cap,  and  slippers,  when  she  was  not  decorated  for  immedi- 
ate show." — The  Rambler. 


9.  Kindness— Sympathy. — "  Johnson,  to  be  sure,  has 
a  roughness  in  his  manner ;  but  no  man  alive  has  a  more  ten. 
der  heart.  He  has  nothing  of  the  bear  but  his  skin." — Gold- 
smith. 

' '  He  was  a  humane,  warm-hearted  man,  at  least  toward 
cases  of  distress  brought  on  by  no  fault  of  the  sufferer ;  he 
opened  his  house  as  a  retreat  for  several  '  infirm  and  decayed  ' 
persons. ' '  — Minto. 

"  His  nature  was  too  tender  and  too  manly  to  incline  to 
Swift's  misanthropy.  Men  might  be  wretched,  but  he  would 
not  therefore  revile  them  as  filthy  Yahoos.  .  .  .  This 
depth  of  tender  feeling  was,  in  fact,  the  foundation  of  John- 
son's character.  .  .  .  His  emotions  were  as  deep  and 
tender  as  they  were  genuine.  How  sacred  was  his  love  for 
his  old  and  ugly  wife  !  how  warm  his  sympathy  wherever  it 
could  be  effective  !  .  .  .  In  his  deep  capacity  for  sym- 
pathy and  reverence  we  recognize  some  of  the  elements  that 
go  to  the  making  of  a  poet." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Few  men  on  record  have  had  a  more  merciful,  tenderly 
affectionate  nature  than  old  Samuel.  He  was  called  a  bear ; 
.  yet  within  that  shaggy  exterior  of  his  there  beat  a 
heart  as  warm  as  a  mother's,  soft  as  a  little  child's.  .  .  . 
But  observe  also  with  what  humanity,  what  openness  of  love, 
he  can  attach  himself  to  all  things — to  a  blind  old  woman,  to 
a  Doctor  Levett,  to  a  cat  '  Hodge.'  .  .  .  Where  in  all 
England  could  there  have  been  found  another  soul  so  full  of 
pity,  a  hand  so  heavenlike  bounteous  as  his?  " — Carlyle. 

"  It  was  natural  that,  though  his  heart  was  undoubtedly 
generous  and  humane,  his  demeanor  in  society  should  be 
harsh  and  despotic.  For  severe  distress  he  had  sympathy, 
and  not  only  sympathy  but  munificent  relief.  .  .  .  He 


2/6  SAMUEL   JOHNSON 

would  carry  home  on  his  shoulders  a  sick  and  starving  girl 
from  the  streets.  He  turned  his  house  into  a  place  of  refuge 
for  a  crowd  of  wretched  old  creatures  who  could  find  no  other 
asylum;  nor  could  all  their  peevishness  and  ingratitude  weary 
out  his  benevolence.  But  the  pangs  of  wounded  vanity 
seemed  to  him  ridiculous ;  and  he  scarcely  felt  sufficient  com- 
passion even  for  the  pangs  of  wounded  affection." — Macaulay. 

"Cumberland  saw  the  tender-hearted  old  man  standing 
beside  his  friend  Garrick's  grave,  at  the  foot  of  Shakespeare's 
monument,  bathed  in  tears."  —  G.  L.  Craik. 

"  In  his  best  hours  he  was  not  devoid  of  susceptibility  nor 
incapable  of  feeling.  His  profound  sympathy  for  the  poor, 
his  affection  for  his  chosen  friends,  and  his  indignation  against 
what  he  felt  to  be  wrong,  reveal  a  sensitive  nature." — T.  W. 
Hunt. 

"Johnson  had  the  tenderest  heart  and  the  strongest  temper 
— the  bitterest  sarcasm  and  the  gentlest  spirit  of  considera- 
tion ;  the  most  utter  hatred  of  sin  and  the  most 
tender  mercy  toward  sinners.  .  .  .  But  what  I  chiefly 
like  him  for,  except  his  tender-heartedness  and  his  unusual 
kindness,  is  his  robust  nature.  .  .  .  Nothing  in  history 
is  more  touching  than  this  man's  tenderness." — George  Daw- 
son. 

"Love  and  sympathy  were  as  necessary  to  this  rough  and 
rugged  man  as  to  any  sentimental  girl.  But  he  gave  far  more 
than  he  received." — Walter  Besant. 

"  His  beautiful  lines  on  Levett's  death  are  still  more  beauti- 
ful and  touching  because  they  recall  a  whole  history  of  John- 
son's goodness,  tenderness,  and  charity." — Matthew  Arnold. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Dear,  Honored  Mother. — Your  weakness  afflicts  me  beyond 
what  I  am  willing  to  communicate  to  you.  I  do  not  think  you 
unfit  to  face  death,  but  I  know  not  how  to  bear  the  thought  of  los- 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  2/7 

ing  you.  ...  I  pray  often  for  you  ;  do  you  pray  for  me. 
.  .  .  I  am,  dear,  dear  mother,  your  dutiful  son,  Sam  John- 
son."— Letters. 

"  One  reason  why  I  delayed  to  write  was,  my  uncertainty  how 
to  answer  your  letter.  I  like  the  thought  of  giving  away  the 
money  very  well ;  but  when  I  consider  that  Tom  Johnson  is  my 
nearest  relative,  and  that  he  is  now  old  and  in  great  want  ;  that 
he  was  my  playfellow  in  childhood,  and  has  never  done  anything 
to  offend  me  ;  I  am  in  doubt  whether  I  ought  not  rather  give  it 
him  than  any  other." — Letters. 

"  Chambers,  you  find,  has  gone  far,  and  poor  Goldsmith  is 
gone  much  farther.  He  died  of  a  fever,  exasperated,  as  I  be- 
lieve, by  the  fear  of  distress.  He  had  raised  money  and  squan- 
dered it  by  every  artifice  of  acquisition  and  folly  of  expense. 
But  let  not  his  frailties  be  remembered  :  he  was  a  very  great 
man." — Letters. 

10.  Religious  Superstition. — "  That  Johnson's  relig- 
ious opinions  sometimes  took  the  form  of  a  rather  grotesque 
superstition,  may  be  true;  and  it  is  easy  enough  to  ridicule 
some  of  its  manifestations.  He  took  the  creed  of  his  day  with- 
out much  examination  of  the  evidence  upon  which  its  dogmas 
rested  ;  but  the  writer  must  be  thoughtless  indeed  who  should 
be  more  inclined  to  laugh  at  his  superficial  oddities  than  to 
admire  the  reverent  spirit  and  the  brave  self-respect  with 
which  he  struggled  through  a  painful  life.  .  .  .  He 
looked  leniently  upon  superstitions,  such  as  ghosts  and  second- 
sight,  which  appeared  to  fall  in  with  his  religious  beliefs, 
while  his  strong  sense  often  made  him  absurdly  sceptical  in 
ordinary  matters." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  He  went  himself  on  a  ghost-hunt  to  Cock  Lane,  and  was 
angry  with  John  Wesley  for  not  following  up  another  scent  of 
the  same  kind  with  proper  spirit  and  perseverance. 
He  has  gravely  noted  down  in  his  diary  that  he  once  com- 
mitted the  sin  of  drinking  coffee  on  Good  Friday.  .  .  . 
But  a  man  who  took  off  his  hat  when  he  passed  a  church 
episcopally  consecrated  must  be  a  good  man,  a  pious  man,  a 


278  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

man  of  good  principles.  Johnson  could  easily  see  that  those 
persons  who  looked  on  a  dance  or  a  laced  waistcoat  as  sinful, 
deemed  most  ignobly  of  the  attributes  of  God  and  the  ends  of 
creation.  But  with  what  a  storm  of  invective  he  would  have 
overwhelmed  any  man  who  had  blamed  him  for  celebrating 
the  redemption  of  mankind  with  sugarless  tea  and  butterless 
buns!  " — Macaulay. 

"  We  can  conceive  that  Johnson,  had  he  lived  when  augury 
by  tokens  was  in  vogue,  would  have  been  a  steadfast  believer 
in  the  flight  of  crows ;  and  that,  if  his  lot  had  been  cast  in  an 
astrological  age,  he  would  have  consulted  his  horoscope  before 
going  on  a  journey  or  embarking  in  an  enterprise." — Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  '  That  the  dead  are  seen  no  more,'  said  Imlac,  '  I  will  not 
undertake  to  maintain,  against  the  concurrent  and  unvaried  testi- 
mony of  all  ages  and  of  all  nations.  There  is  no  people,  rude  or 
learned,  among  whom  apparitions  of  the  dead  are  not  related 
and  believed.  .  .  .  That  it  is  doubted  by  single  cavillers  can 
very  little  weaken  the  general  evidence  ;  and  some  who  deny  it 
with  their  tongues  confess  it  by  their  fears.'  " — Rasselas. 

"  Methought  I  was  in  the  midst  of  a  very  entertaining  set  of 
company,  and  extremely  delighted  in  attending  to  a  lively  con- 
versation, when  on  a  sudden  I  perceived  one  of  the  most  shock- 
ing figures  imagination  can  frame  advancing  toward  me.  She 
was  dressed  in  black,  her  skin  was  contracted  into  a  thousand 
wrinkles,  her  eyes  deep  sunk  in  her  head,  and  her  complexion 
pale  and  livid  as  the  countenance  of  death.  Her  looks  were  filled 
with  terror  and  unrelenting  severity,  and  her  hands  armed  with 
whips  and  scorpions.  As  soon  as  she  came  near,  with  a  horrid 
frown,  and  a  voice  that  chilled  my  very  blood,  she  bid  me  follow 
her.  I  obeyed,  and  she  led  me  through  rugged  paths,  beset  with 
briars  and  thorns,  into  a  deep,  solitary  valley.  Wherever  she 
passed  the  fading  verdure  withered  beneath  her  steps  ;  her  pesti- 
lential breath  infected  the  air  with  malignant  vapours,  obscured 
the  lustre  of  the  sun,  and  involved  the  fair  face  of  heaven  in  uni- 
versal gloom.  Dismal  bowlings  resounded  through  the  forest, 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON  279 

from  every  baleful  tree,  the  night  raven  uttered  his  dreadful  note, 
and  the  prospect  was  filled  with  desolation  and  horror." — The 
Rambler. 

"  As  I  sat  thus,  forming  alternatively  excuses  for  delay  and 
resolutions  to  go  forward,  an  irresistible  heaviness  suddenly  sur- 
prised me  ;  I  laid  my  head  upon  the  bank  and  resigned  myself  to 
sleep,  when  methought  I  heard  the  sound  as  of  the  flight  of  eagles 
and  a  being  of  more  than  human  dignity  stood  before  me.  While 
I  was  deliberating  how  to  address  him,  he  took  me  by  the  hand 
with  an  air  of  kindness,  and  asked  me  solemnly,  but  without 
severity:  '  Theodore,  whither  art  thou  going  ?  '  '  I  am  climbing,' 
answered  I,  '  to  the  top  of  the  mountain,  to  enjoy  a  more  exten- 
sive prospect  of  the  works  of  nature.'  '  Attend  first,'  said  he,  '  to 
the  prospect  which  this  place  affords,  and  what  thou  dost  not 
understand  I  will  explain.  I  am  one  of  the  benevolent  beings 
who  watch  over  the  children  of  dust,  to  preserve  them  from  those 
evils  which  will  not  ultimately  terminate  in  good,  and  which 
they  do  not,  by  their  own  faults,  bring  upon  themselves.  Look 
around,  therefore,  without  fear  :  observe,  contemplate,  and  be 
instructed.'  "  —  The  Vision  of  Theodore. 


II.  Humor. — "  By  way  of  strange  contrast  to  this  quality 
[gravity]  his  style  is  not  infrequently  marked  by  the  most 
playful  humor.  Bos  well's  biography  is  full  of  these  outbursts 
of  pleasantry,  when,  by  way  of  reaction  from  the  inherent 
gravity  of  his  nature,  he  would  indulge  in  sallies  of  wit  and 
repartee.  There  is  just  enough  of  this  in  his  prose  to  give  it 
flavor  and  attractiveness.  In  '  The  Lives  of  the  Poets  '  this 
order  of  style  is  well  presented." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

"  When  he  is  in  a  pleasant  mood  his  humour  is  broad  and 
arrogant.  The  most  pleasing  form  of  his  humour  is  when  he  is 
humourous  at  his  own  expense.  .  .  .  Many  of  the  Ram- 
blers are  full  of  genuine  humour,  broad  and  hearty,  and  of 
happy  strokes  of  wit." — Minto. 

"  When  he  threw  aside  his  pen,  which  he  regarded  as  an 
encumbrance,  he  became  not  only  learned  and  thoughtful,  but 
acute,  witty,  humourous,  natural,  honest." — Hazlitt. 


28O  SAMUEL  JOHNSOlST 

"  His  little  circle  of  friends  called  forth  his  humour  as  the 
House  of  Commons  excited  Chatham's  eloquence. 
His  queer  prejudices  take  a  humourous  form,  and  give  a  delight- 
ful zest  to  his  conversation." — Leslie  Stephen. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Last  Saturday  I  came  to  Ashbourne — Ashbourne  in  the  Peak. 
Let  not  the  barren  name  of  the  Peak  terrify  you  ;  I  have  never 
wanted  strawberries  and  cream.  The  great  bull  has  no  disease 
but  age.  I  hope  in  time  to  be  like  the  great  bull ;  and  hope  you 
will  be  like  him  too  a  hundred  years  hence." — Dr.  Johnson  to 
Mrs,  Thrale. 

"  Dear  Sir,  ...  I  will  not  send  compliments  to  my  friends 
by  name,  because  I  would  be  loath  to  leave  any  out  in  the 
enumeration.  Tell  them,  as  you  see  them,  how  well  I  speak  of 
Scotch  politeness,  and  Scotch  hospitality,  and  Scotch  beauty, 
and  of  everything  Scotch,  but  Scotch  oat-cakes  and  Scotch  prej- 
udices."—  To  James  Boswell,  Esq. 

Johnson. — "  Nay,  sir,  it  was  not  the  wine  that  made  your  head 
ache,  but  the  sense  1  put  into  it." 

Bos  well. — "  What,  sir  ;  will  sense  make  the  head  ache  ?  " 

Johnson. — "  Yes,  sir,  when  it  is  not  used  to  it." — Bosivelts 
Life  of  Johnson . 

12.  Personification  of  Abstract  Nouns.— This  is  a 

peculiarly  Johnsonian  characteristic.  He  continually  uses 
the  abstract  noun  as  if  it  were  a  person,  making  it  the  sub- 
ject of  an  active  verb,  and  thus  gaining  brevity. 

"To  make  up  what  is  called  '  the  Johnsonian  manner,'  or 
'  Johnsonese,'  we  must  take  not  only  these  striking  peculiarities 
of  sentence-structure  but  certain  other  peculiarities,  especially 
a  peculiar,  use  of  the  abstract  noun." — Minto. 

"  It  was  not,  however,  the  mere  bigness  of  the  words  that 
distinguished  his  style  but  a  peculiar  love  of  putting  the  ab- 
stract for  the  concrete." — Leslie  Stephen. 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON  28  I 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Luxury,  avarice,  injustice,  violence,  and  ambition  take  up 
their  ordinary  residence  in  populous  cities  ;  while  the  hard  and 
laborious  life  of  the  husbandman  will  not  admit  of  these  vices." 
—  Thoughts  on  Agriculture. 

"  I  shall  therefore  lay  my  case  before  you,  and  hope  by  your 
decision  to  be  set  free  from  unreasonable  restraints  and  enabled 
to  justify  myself  against  the  accusations  which  spite  and  peevish- 
ness produce  against  me." — The  Rambler. 

"  To  oppose  the  devastations  of  Famine,  who  scattered  the 
ground  everywhere  with  carcasses,  Labour  came  down  upon  earth. 
Labour  was  the  son  of  Necessity,  the  nurseling  of  Hope,  and  the 
pupil  of  Art ;  he  had  the  strength  of  his  mother,  the  spirit  of  his 
nurse,  and  the  dexterity  of  his  governess." — The  Rambler. 

11  My  name  is  Religion.  I  am  the  offspring  of  Truth  and  Love 
and  the  parent  of  Benevolence,  Hope,  and  Joy.  The  monster 
from  whose  power  I  have  freed  you  is  called  Superstition.  She 
is  the  child  of  Discontent  and  her  followers  are  Fear  and  Sor- 
row."—  The  Rambler. 


BURKE,   1729-1797 

Biographical  Outline. — Edmund  Burke,  born  at  Dub- 
lin about  January  12,  1729;  father  a  Protestant  attorney, 
mother  a  Roman  Catholic ;  Burke,  is  reared  as  a  Protestant, 
but  so  many  of  his  friends  were  Catholics  that  he  early  learned 
toleration;  in  1741  he  enters  a  school  at  Ballitore,  County 
Kildare,  kept  by  one  Shackleton,  a  Quaker,  with  whose  son, 
Richard,  he  forms  and  maintains  a  life-long  friendship ;  he 
enters  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  in  1743,  and  remains  there  till 
1748,  studying  diligently,  but  not  following  any  systematic 
course  ;  he  becomes  especially  familiar  with  the  works  of 
Cicero,  whom  he  takes  as  "  the  model  on  which  he  labored 
to  form  his  own  character,  in  eloquence,  in  policy,  in  ethics, 
and  in  philosophy;  "  he  acquires  some  knowledge  of  Greek, 
and  wins  a  scholarship  on  examination  in  1746  ;  he  is  entered 
at  the  Middle  Temple,  London,  in  1747,  takes  A.B.  at 
Dublin  in  the  spring  of  1748,  and  goes  to  London  to  study 
law  in  1750;  owing  to  weak  health  he  does  not  study  se- 
verely, but  spends  much  time  travelling  about  the  Midland 
counties  of  England  ;  little  is  known  of  his  life  between 
1752  and  1757  ;  he  appears  to  have  visited  France,  to  have 
frequented  theatres  and  debating  clubs,  and  to  have  met  some 
eminent  men,  including  Garrick,  who  became  his  life-long 
friend  ;  Burke  refuses  to  enter  upon  the  practice  of  law, 
which  so  angers  his  father  that,  in  1755,  his  paternal  allow- 
ance of  ;£ioo  a  year  is  wholly  or  partly  withdrawn,  and 
he  is  forced  to  depend  on  literature  for  a  livelihood  ;  he  had 
probably  written  before  that  time  "  Hints  for  an  Essay  on  the 
Drama,"  unpublished  till  after  his  death;  in  1756  he  pub- 
lishes "  A  Vindication  of  Natural  Society  "  and  "  A  Philo- 

282 


BURKE  283 

sophical  Inquiry  into  the  Origin  of  our  Ideas  on  the  Sublime 
and  the  Beautiful,"  the  latter  having  been  begun  in  1748; 
these  two  books  at  once  give  to  Burke  a  high  literary  reputa- 
tion, and  so  please  his  father  that  he  sends  him  a  present  of 
^100  ;  he  takes  lodgings  (probably  first  at  Bath)  with  his 
physician,  Dr.  Nugent,  whose  daughter  Jane  (reared  as  a  Ro- 
man Catholic)  he  marries  in  the  winter  of  1756-57  ;  his  wife 
conforms  to  his  religion,  and  the  marriage  proves  happy ;  in 
1757  he  publishes  "  An  Account  of  the  European  Settlements 
in  America,"  originally  written  by  his  cousin,  William  Burke, 
but  revised  and  much  modified  by  Burke  ;  he  writes  also, 
in  1757,  his  "Abridgment  of  the  History  of  England;" 
in  1758  he  begins  to  edit  the  Annual  Register,  receiving 
from  the  publisher,  Dodsley,  ^100  a  year  for  his  services; 
he  contributes  to  the  Register  the  "Survey  of  Events" 
for  several  years  thereafter ;  he  resides  in  Wimpole  Street, 
with  his  father-in-law,  is  in  straitened  financial  circum- 
stances, and  seeks  in  vain  from  Pitt  the  office  of  consul  at 
Madrid;  in  1759  he  becomes  private  secretary  to  W.  G. 
Hamilton  ;  this  position  brings  Burke  to  the  notice  of  many 
men  in  power,  and,  in  1761,  he  becomes  secretary  to  the 
Earl  of  Halifax,  whom  Burke  accompanies  to  Ireland  ;  while 
in  Ireland  he  writes  reflections  on  the  penal  code  and  also  an 
address  to  the  king  in  behalf  of  oppressed  Irish  Catholics,  both 
papers  being  published  after  his  death  ;  he  returns  to  London 
after  a  year  in  Dublin  and  obtains,  through  Hamilton,  in  the 
spring  of  1763,  a  pension  of  ^300  a  year;  he  accepts  the 
pension  on  condition  that  Hamilton  allow  him  some  time  for 
literary  work;  in  May,  1674,  on  Hamilton's  expulsion, 
Burke  returns  to  live  with  his  father-in-law  in  Queen  Anne 
Street;  in  1762  he  joins  the  Turk's  Head  Club,  where  he 
shines  as  a  conversationalist  with  Johnson,  Garrick,  Reynolds, 
Goldsmith,  and  others ;  he  becomes  warmly  attached  to  John- 
son, Garrick,  and  Reynolds  ;  Burke  refuses  to  give  his  whole 
time  to  Hamilton's  service,  and  Hamilton  breaks  off  his  con- 


284  BURKE 

nection  with  him,  so  that  Burke  loses  his  pension;  he  is  in 
poverty  for  awhile,  but  seems  to  have  reached  a  better  finan- 
cial condition  by  .1765,  probably  through  the  speculations  of 
his  brother  and  his  cousin ;  in  July,  1765,  he  becomes  secretary 
to  Lord  Rockingham,  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury  ;  Burke's  en- 
emies try,  unsuccessfully,  to  deprive  him  of  his  position  by 
accusing  him  of  being  a  Papist,  a  Jesuit,  an  Irish  adventur- 
er, etc. ;  Rockingham  refuses  to  believe  the  slanders,  becomes 
Burke's  warm  friend,  and  aids  him  financially,  but  the  false 
charge  of  being  a  Papist  was  subsequently  and  frequently  made 
against  Burke;  he  is  elected  member  of  Parliament  for  Wend- 
over,  December  23,  1765,  and  makes  his  first  speech  in  Jan- 
uary, 1766,  arguing  in  favor  of  receiving  the  petition  from  the 
American  Congress ;  he  soon  becomes  a  leading  member  of 
the  House,  and,  according  to  Johnson,  makes  "  two  speeches 
on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  which  were  publicly  com- 
mended by  Mr.  Pitt  and  have  filled  the  town  with  wonder  ;  " 
he  is  greatly  admired  at  first  for  his  commanding  eloquence, 
but  he  soon  loses  his  power  over  the  House,  whose  members 
could  not  follow  his  profound  thoughts;  the  conservatives 
among  the  Whigs  are  determined  to  exclude  him  from  high 
office,  and  this  tends  to  sour  his  naturally  high  temper  and  to 
make  him  vehement  and  often  undignified  ;  on  the  resignation 
of  the  Duke  of  Grafton  as  one  of  the  Secretaries  of  State  Burke 
endeavors  in  vain  to  secure  the  vacant  office,  and  declines  a 
proffered  seat  at  the  Board  of  Trade  ;  on  Rockingham's  dis- 
placement in  June,  1766,  he  defends  Rockingham's  career  in 
a  pamphlet  called  A  Short  History  of  a  Short  Administra- 
tion;  he  visits  his  relatives  in  Ireland  in  the  summer  of 
1766,  and  on  his  return  refuses  overtures  made  by  Chatham 
with  a  view  to  attaching  Burke  to  the  administration  ;  he  op- 
poses Townshend's  plan  for  taxing  the  American  colonies  in 
1767  ;  in  the  spring  of  1768  he  buys  an  estate  of  six  hundred 
acres  in  Buckinghamshire,  near  Beaconsfield,  twenty-four  miles 
from  London,  paying  ^6,000  down  and  borrowing  the  balance 


BURKE  285 

of  ;£i  4,000  by  mortgaging  the  estate  ;  he  is  supposed  to  have 
been  aided  by  his  brother,  his  cousin,  and  Lord  Verney,  who 
were  engaged  in  somewhat  reckless  speculation  at  the  time  ;  he 
borrows  a  part  of  the  ^6,000  from  Garrick,  lives  extravagant- 
ly, and  is  ever  afterward  in  pecuniary  straits,  especially  after 
the  financial  crash  of  1769,  which  ruined  his  cousin  and  his 
brother;  in  1769  he  defends  Wilkes,  and  in  1770  publishes 
his  "  Thoughts  on  the  Present  Discontents,"  which  serves  to 
regenerate  the  Whigs  by  demanding  publicity  of  Parliamen- 
tary proceedings  and  an  increase  in  the  power  of  the  people  ; 
he  also  speaks,  during  the  session  of  1770,  in  favor  of  free 
speech,  a  free  press,  free  trade,  and  freedom  from  church 
tithes ;  he  is  virulently  attacked  by  the  pamphleteers,  and  is 
charged  with  the  authorship  of  the  "  Letters  of  Junius ;  "  in 
the  autumn  of  1771  he  is  appointed  agent  for  the  province  of 
New  York  at  a  salary  of  ^500,  and,  in  the  following  year,  he 
refuses  to  act  as  an  agent  of  the  East  India  Company  with  a 
higher  salary  ;  he  speaks  in  favor  of  religious  toleration,  in  the 
session  of  1773,  but  is  intolerant  toward  infidels  because  of  a 
view  of  French  morals  and  philosophy  obtained  during  a  visit 
to  Paris  in  February,  1773  ;  he  becomes  an  ally  of  Fox  in 
1774,  and  for  the  next  eight  years  they  vehemently  oppose 
Lord  North's  administration  ;  Burke  makes  his  great  speech 
on  American  taxation  in  the  spring  of  1774,  and  opposes  the 
bill  for  closing  the  port  of  Boston ;  he  is  elected  for  Bristol  in 
the  succeeding  autumn ;  in  March,  1775,  ne  protests  against 
restraining  the  trade  of  the  American  colonies,  and  proposes 
his  famous  thirteen  resolutions  for  conciliation,  which  are 
defeated;  in  November,  1776,  he  makes  a  final  effort  for  the 
revision  of  all  the  acts  aggrieving  the  colonies,  and,  after  fail- 
ing, withdraws  from  Parliament  during  the  discussion  of  all 
questions  concerning  America;  he  defends  his  action  in  "A 
Letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol  ;  "  during  the  sessions  of 
1778  and  1779  he  labors  to  abolish  wrecking,  the  use  of  the 
pillory,  and  the  employment  of  Indians  in  the  American  war; 


286  BURKE 

he  tries  in  vain  to  secure  the  reform  of  domestic  political 
abuses  in  the  session  of  1780,  secures  some  modification  of  the 
acts  against  Irish  trade,  and  advocates  the  relief  of  the  Scotch 
Catholics  ;  he  defies  the  mob  in  the  "  no-popery  "  riots  of 
1780,  but  is  unharmed  ;  his  efforts  toward  religious  toleration 
and  his  defence  of  Ireland  cause  the  loss  of  his  political  influ- 
ence in  Bristol,  but  he  secures  a  seat  for  Mai  ton,  through 
Rockingham  ;  in  1781  he  again  proposes  a  bill  for  economical 
reform,  and  is  supported  by  William  Pitt  the  Younger  ;  with 
the  aid  of  Fox,  Burke  forces  Lord  North  to  resign  in  the 
spring  of  1782  ;  on  the  accession  of  the  Rockingham  Whigs 
in  1782  Burke  is  again  excluded  from  the  cabinet  seat  to  which 
he  was  richly  entitled,  and  is  again  put  off  with  the  paltry  office 
of  paymaster  of  the  forces  ;  he  again  labors  for  self-govern- 
ment in  Ireland,  and  at  last  carries  a  large  part  of  his  scheme 
for  economical  reform  ;  he  receives  a  salary  of  ^4,000  as 
paymaster,  and  is  promised  by  the  government  "something 
considerable  for  his  wife  and  son  ;  "  by  the  death  of  Rock- 
ingham he  loses  both  his  office  and  the  promised  "some- 
thing ;  "  he  endeavors  in  vain  to  secure  a  political  sinecure 
clerkship  for  his  son  ;  he  becomes  paymaster  again  in  1783, 
and  devotes  himself  to  reforms  in  the  government  of  India  ; 
he  meets  and  greatly  admires  Frances  Burney  (Madame 
d'Arblay),  and  is  elected  Lord  Rector  of  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity in  1784  ;  his  political  enemies  make  his  life  miserable 
with  slander  and  obloquy,  and  he  is  treated  with  great  dis- 
respect in  the  House,  though  he  recovers  £100  damages, 
with  costs,  in  a  libel  suit  against  the  printer  of  the  Public 
Advertiser ;  he  continues  his  efforts  against  the  maladmin- 
istration of  Hastings  in  India,  and,  on  February  18,  1785, 
makes  his  famous  speech  on  the  Nabob  of  Arcot's  debts ;  he 
is  re-elected  Lord  Rector  of  Glasgow  in  1785,  and  makes  a 
tour  of  Scotland,  astonishing  the  northern  scholars  with  the 
universality  of  his  knowledge;  in  1786  he  is  aided  by  Fox, 
Francis,  Sheridan,  and  others  in  his  attack  on  Hastings,  and, 


BURKE  287 

on  May  10,  1787,  he  impeaches  Hastings  at  the  bar  of  the 
House  of  Lords  ;  he  begins  his  great  speech  against  Hastings 
February  15,  1787,  and  continues  speaking  during  four  days, 
except  for  a  brief  interruption  due  to  illness ;  he  is  in  finan- 
cial straits  again  in  1787,  and  is  aided  by  a  gift  of  ^1,000 
from  his  friend  Dr.  Brocklesby ;  in  November,  1788,  when  Fox 
comes  into  power,  he  [Fox]  declines  to  aid  in  securing  for 
Burke  the  cabinet  position  that  Burke  deserved,  and  arranges 
to  give  him,  instead,  his  old  office  of  paymaster,  besides  a 
pension  of  ^£2,000,  half  to  go  to  Burke's  son  and  half  to  his 
wife ;  Burke's  disappointment  increases  his  vehemence  and 
bitterness  during  1789,  and  his  enemies  renew  their  false 
charges  of  Jesuitism,  etc.  ;  on  May  4,  1789,  he  receives 
from  the  House  a  vote  of  censure  for  using  violent  expressions 
toward  a  fellow-member,  and  many  regard  him  as  •''  an  in- 
genious madman  ;  "  he  aids  Wilberforce  in  1788-89  in  Wil- 
berforce's  efforts  to  abolish  the  slave-trade — an  object  for 
which  Burke  had  begun  to  work  as  early  as  1780;  in  the 
autumn  of  1789  he  writes  his  "  Reflections  on  the  Revolution 
in  France"  as  a  warning  to  his  more  radical  countrymen, 
and  publishes  it  November  i,  1790;  early  in  1790  he  be- 
comes estranged  from  Fox  and  Sheridan,  who  oppose  Burke's 
position  on  the  French  Revolution;  the  "  Reflections  "  pass 
through  eleven  editions  in  their  first  year,  and  Burke  receives 
LL.D.  from  Dublin,  after  narrowly  failing  to  receive  D.C.L. 
from  Oxford;  the  "Reflections"  create  a  reaction  against 
the  French  Revolution  in  England,  and  divide  the  country 
into  two  parties  on  the  subject,  thus  doing  much  to  weaken 
the  Whigs  ;  Burke  receives  the  compliments  of  foreign  sov- 
ereigns;  he  sits  for  Malton  again  in  1790,  and  renews  his 
activity  against  Hastings  ;  he  publishes  "  A  Letter  to  a  Mem- 
ber of  the  National  Assembly"  early  in  1791,  and  soon  af- 
terward breaks  finally  with  Fox  and  with  the  Whig  party  on 
the  debate  over  the  Quebec  Bill;  he  retires  to  Margate  late 
in  1791  and  publishes  his  "  Appeal  from  the  New  to  the  Old 


288  BURKE 

Whigs  "  and  his  "  Thoughts  on  French  Affairs;  "  in  January, 
1792,  he  writes  his  letter  to  Sir  Hercules  Langrishe,  discuss- 
ing religious  toleration  in  Ireland;  in  February,  1792,  on 
the  death  of  his  friend  Reynolds,  Burke  receives  from  Rey- 
nolds a  legacy  of  ^2,000  ;  during  the  session  of  1792  he  op- 
poses a  motion  for  Parliamentary  reform  and  one  for  the  re- 
peal of  certain  penal  statutes  as  to  religious  opinions,  thus 
giving  color  to  the  charge  that  he  had  discarded  his  life-long 
views  of  religious  and  civil  liberty  ;  though  without  a  party, 
Burke  now  becomes  "  a  sort  of  power  of  Europe  ;  "  he  cor- 
responds with  "  Monsieur  "  (Louis  XVIII.),  and  is  regarded 
as  the  representative  of  the  French  refugees  in  England  ;  late 
in  1792  he  advocates  war  with  France,  and  takes  sides  with 
the  Conservative  ministry;  his  popularity  returns  with  the 
declaration  of  war ;  he  mourns  the  loss  of  Fox's  friendship, 
but  declines  to  make  overtures  toward  a  reconciliation ;  from 
May  28  to  June  16,  1793,  he  makes  a  nine  days'  speech  de- 
fending his  impeachment  of  Hastings,  and  on  the  i9th  he 
receives  the  thanks  of  the  House ;  he  retires  finally  from 
Parliament  in  July,  1793:  the  loss  of  his  son  on  the  2d 
of  the  following  August  nearly  breaks  Burke' s  heart ;  on  Au- 
gust 3oth  he  is  granted  a  pension  of  ^1,200  a  year  ;  this  was 
soon  increased,  and  a  second  pension  of  ^£2,500  was  added, 
which  Burke  promptly  sold  to  pay  his  debts  ;  he  lives  in  re- 
tirement at  Beaconsfield  during  1795,  but  writes  his  "Re- 
marks on  the  Apparent  Circumstances  of  the  War"  (pub- 
lished after  his  death)  and  "  A  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,"  the 
latter  being  a  reply  to  an  attack  on  Burke's  pension  made  by 
the  Duke  of  Bedford;  in  1796  he  founds  at  Penn,  near  Bea- 
consfield, a  school  for  ihe  sons  of  French  emigrants;  he 
writes  and  publishes  his  first  two  "Letters  on  a  Regicide 
Peace  "  during  the  summer  of  1796  ;  he  is  severely  ill  late  in 
the  summer,  and  Windham,  then  Secretary  of  War,  writes  : 
"Your  life  is  at  this  moment  of  more  consequence  than  that 
of  any  [other]  man  living;  "  Burke  is  visited  by  Wilberforce 


BURKE  289 

and  many  other  eminent  men  ;  he  dies  at  Beaconsfield,  July 
9,  1797  ;  Fox  proposes  in  the  House  that  he  be  buried  at 
public  expense  in  Westminster  Abbey,  but,  in  accordance 
with  Burke's  expressed  wish,  he  is  buried  at  Beaconsfield. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON   BURKE'S   STYLE. 

Prior,  J.,  "Life  of  Edmund  Burke."     London,  1878,  G.  Bell  &  Sons, 
512-519,  etc. 

Brougham,  H.,  "  Statesmen  of  George  III."     Edinburgh,  1872,  Black, 
3:  231-261. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  "England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century."     New  York, 
1888,  Appleton,  3  :  198-399. 

McKnight,  T. ,  "The  Life  and  Times  of  Burke."     London,  1860,  Chap- 
man &  Hall,  3  :  1-752. 

Minto,  W.,  "English  Prose  Literature."    Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 
440-461. 

Goodrich,  C.  A.,  "British  Eloquence."    New  York,  1853,  Harper,  206- 
240. 

De  Quincey,  T.,  "  Literary  Criticism."     Boston,  1882,   Houghton,  Mif- 
flin  &  Co.,  348-352. 

Rogers,  S.,  "  Recollections."      London,  1859,  Longmans  &  Co.,  81-89. 

Craik,   G.    L.,    "History   of   English    Literature."     New    York,    1869, 
Scribner,  328-353. 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "Sketches  and  Essays."     London,  1878,  G.  Bell  &  Son, 
408-426. 

Morley,  J.,    "English    Men   of   Letters"  (Burke).     New   York,    1879, 
Harper,  210-229. 

Knight,  C.,  "Gallery  of  Portraits."     London,  1837,  C.  Knight,  3:  33- 
40. 

Croly,   Geo.,  "The    Political    Life   of  Burke."     London,    1840,   Black- 
wood,  v.  index. 

Wilberforce,   Bishop,    "Life  of  Wilberforce."      London,    1860,    Black- 
wood,  57-68. 

May,  Sir  T.  E.,  "Constitutional  History."     London,  1876,  Macmillan, 
I  :  492-493- 

Taine,   H.  A.,    "History  of   English   Literature."     New  York,    1875, 
Holt,  2  :  309-318  and  v.  index  in  3. 

Fox,  C.  J.,  "Parliamentary  History."     London,  1815,  Reuter  Agency, 
28  :  363. 
19 


290  BURKE 

Stephen,  L  ,  "English  Thought  of  the  Eighteenth  Century."  London, 
1881,  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  219-252. 

Macaulay,  T.  B,  "Miscellaneous  Works."  New  York,  1880,  Harper, 
4:  1 20  and  v.  index. 

Buckle,  H.  T.,  '"' History  of  Civilization  in  England."  New  York,  1859, 
Appleton,  326-330. 

Hunt,  T.  W.,  "Representative  English  Prose."  New  York,  1887, 
Armstrong,  334-362. 

Mclntosh,  Sir  J.,  "Miscellaneous.  Works. "  New  York,  1871,  Apple- 
ton,  40-45. 

Ferris,   G.    F.,    "Great  Leaders."     New  York,  1889,   Appleton,   369- 

378- 

Payne,  E.  J.,  Introduction  to  "Burke:  Select  Works."  Oxford,  1883, 
Clarendon  Press,  XXX.-XLIX. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  "Short  Studies."  New  York,  1877,  Scribner,  Armstrong 
&Co. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicta."     New  York,  1887,  Scribner,  2:  149-196. 

Gosse,  E.,  "History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  Literature."  New 
York,  1889,  Macmillan,  365-374. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 375-378. 

Robertson,  J.  B.,  "  Lectures  on  the  Life  of  Burke."     Dublin,  1875. 

Dilke,  C.  W.,  "Papers  of  a  Critic."  London,  1875,  J.  Murray,  2: 
309-330. 

Adams,  W.  H.  D.,  "English  Party  Leaders."  London,  1878,  Tinsley 
Bros.,  1 :  261-341. 

Dulcken,  H.  W.,  "Worthies  of  the  World."  New  York,  1882,  Put- 
nam, 33-58. 

Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1883, 
Appleton,  256-261. 

Stephen,  L.,  "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."  New  York,  1890, 
Macmillan,  7 :  345-365. 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "Political  Essays."  New  York,  1889,  \Varne  &  Co.,  269, 
276,  and  361-377. 

Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1893, 
Harper,  2:  9-11,  etc. 

Hunt,  T.  W.,  "Studies  in  Literature  and  Style."  New  York,  1890, 
Armstrong,  35-39. 

McCormick,  Charles,  "  Memoirs  of  the  Rt.  Hon.  Edmund  Burke."  Lon- 
don, 1897,  McCormick. 

Edgar,  J.  G.,  "Footprints  of  Famous  Men."  New  York,  1854,  Har- 
per, 46-67. 


BURKE  291 

Miles,  W.  A.,  "  Letter  on  Burke's  '  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord.'  "    London, 

1796,  J.  Debrett,  101. 

— ,  "The  Georgian  Era."     London,  1832,  Bronston  &  Co., 

1 :  318-329. 
Wotton,    Mabel   E.,    "Word  Portraits."     London,   1887,  Bentley,  39- 

42. 

Fortnightly  Review,  7:  129-303  and  420  (J.  Morley). 
Xorth  American  Review,  88  :  61-113  (C.  C.  Smith). 
Bibliotheca  Sacra,  31:  507-525  (G.  Shepard). 
Quarterly  Review,  34:  457-487  (J.  Prior). 
Edinburgh  Review,  46  :  269-303. 
Contemporary  Review,  50:  27-47  (Birrell). 
Methodist  Quarterly  Review,  1 8  :  IOI-IIO  (Fry). 
National  Magazine,  3  :  432-438. 
The  Nation,  22 :  48-49  (A.  V.  Dicey). 
Eclectic  Magazine,  30:  201-210  (Gilfillan). 
Edinburgh  Review,  46:  277  (Adams). 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

i.  Impassioned  Eloquence — Miltonic  Grandeur. 

— It  is  this  quality,  perhaps,  more  than  any  other  that  has 
caused  such  critics  as  De  Quincey,  Craik,  and  others  to  call 
Burke  "  the  supreme  writer  of  his  century."  T.  W.  Hunt  de- 
clares that  Burke's  style  "marks  the  highest  point  as  yet  attained 
in  England  in  forensic  prose.  His  eloquence  is  supreme  and 
rises  to  the  level  of  the  sublime.  It  is  oratorical  passion  in 
the  essence."  Macaulay  says  that  Burke  is  "in  amplitude 
of  comprehension  and  richness  of  imagination  superior  to  ev- 
ery orator,  ancient  or  modern."  Of  Burke's  "Address  to  the 
King,"  John  Morley  says,  "Each  sentence  falls  on  the  ear 
with  the  accent  of  some  golden-tongued  oracle  of  the  wise 
gods."  Another  critic  calls  him  "  an  orator  in  all  his  thoughts 
and  a  sage  in  all  his  eloquence."  Brougham  speaks  of  his 
"fierce,  nervous,  overwhelming  declamation,  the  heavy  artillery 
of  powerful  declamation."  Goodrich  says  that  "  the  variety 
and  extent  of  his  powers  in  debate  was  greater  than  that  of 


292  BURKE 

any  other  orator  in  ancient  or  modern  times."  Minto  con- 
siders his  declamatory  energy  largely  due  to  the  concreteness 
of  his  terms  and  images.  Chambers  exclaims,  "  Who  can 
withstand  the  fascination  and  magic  of  his  eloquence  !  "  and 
Payne  combines  all  these  estimates  when  he  says,  "  His  writ- 
ings have  ever  since  been  the  model  of  all  who  wish  to  say 
anything  forcibly,  naturally,  freely,  and  in  a  comparatively 
small  space." 

"  I  steadily  affirm  that  of  all  th&men  who  are,  or  who  ever 
have  been,  eminent  for  energy  or  splendor  of  eloquence, 

.     .     there  is  not  one  who  surpasses  Burke." — Dr.  Parr. 

"  His  descriptions  were  more  vivid,  more  harrowing,  more 
horrible  than  human  utterance  on  either  fact  or  fancy  ever 
formed  before.  ...  At  one  time  he  dropped  his  head 
upon  his  hands  and  was  unable  to  proceed,  while  the  bosoms 
of  his  auditors  became  convulsed  with  passion." — Madame 
a' Arblay  [describing  the  speech  against  Hastings]. 

"For  half  an  hour  I  looked  upon  the  orator  in  a  revery  of 
wonder,  and  actually  felt  myself  to  be  the  most  culpable  man 
on  earth." — Warren  Hastings. 

"  Burke  had  .  .  .  the  grandeur  proper  to  a  man 
dealing  with  imperial  themes  ;  the  freedom  of  nations,  the 
justice  of  rulers,  the  fortunes  of  great  societies,  the  sacredness 
of  law.  .  .  .  He  had  the  amplitude,  the  weightiness, 
the  inspiration,  the  high  flight  of  Milton,  but  there  can  hardly 
have  been  any  conscious  attempt  at  imitation.  .  .  .  He 
imprints  himself  upon  us  with  a  magnificence  and  elevation  of 
expression  that  places  him  among  the  highest  masters  of  lit- 
erature."— -John  Morley. 

"  Burke  has  been  compared  to  Cicero — I  do  not  know  for 
what  reason.  Their  excellences  are  as  different,  and  indeed 
as  opposite,  as  they  can  well  be.  Burke  had  not  the  polished 
elegance,  the  glassy  neatness,  the  artful  regularity,  the  exqui- 
site modulation,  of  Cicero.  He  had  a  thousand  times  more 
richness  and  originality  of  mind,  more  strength  and  pomp 


BURKE  293 

of  diction.  .  .  .  If  it  [grandeur]  is  not  to  be  found  in 
Burke,  it  is  to  be  found  nowhere.  Burke's  eloquence  was  that 
of  the  poet ;  of  the  man  of  high  and  unbounded  fancy :  his 
wisdom  was  profound  and  contemplative.  .  .  .  Burke's 
eloquence  was  calculated  to  make  them  [men]  think." — 
Hazlitt. 

"The  rapid,  vehement,  impetuous  torrent  of  his  eloquence, 
kindling  as  it  flowed,  and  the  nervous  motions  of  his  counte- 
nance reflected  the  ungovernable  excitement  under  which  he 
labored.  .  .  .  [There  was]  great  magnetism  in  his  elo- 
quence. He  made  the  whole  House  pass  in  an  instant  from 
the  tenderest  emotions  of  feeling  to  bursts  of  laughter ;  never 
was  the  electric  power  of  eloquence  more  imperiously  felt." — 
W.  E.  H.  Lecky. 

"  The  vast  amount  of  his  works  rolls  impetuously  in  a  cur- 
rent of  eloquence.  .  .  .  It  is  either  the  expose  of  a 
ministry  or  the  whole  history  of  British  India  or  the  complete 
theory  of  revolutions  and  the  political  conditions,  which  comes 
down  like  a  vast  overflowing  stream,  to  dash  with  its  ceaseless 
effort  and  accumulated  mass  against  some  crime  that  men 
would  overlook  or  some  injustice  which  they  would  sanction." 
—Taine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Therefore  it  is  with  confidence  that,  ordered  by  the  Commons 
of  Great  Britain,  I  impeach  Warren  Hastings  of  high  crimes  and 
misdemeanors.  I  impeach  him  in  the  name  of  the  Commons  of 
Great  Britain,  whose  parliamentary  trust  he  has  abused  ;  I  im- 
peach him  in  the  name  of  the  Commons  of  Great  Britain,  whose 
national  character  he  has  dishonoured  ;  I  impeach  him  in  the 
name  of  the  people  of  India,  whose  laws,  rights,  and  liberties  he 
has  subverted  ;  I  impeach  him  in  the  name  of  the  people  of  India, 
whose  property  he  has  destroyed,  whose  country  he  has  laid  waste 
and  desolate  ;  I  impeach  him  in  the  name  of  human  nature  itself, 
which  he  has  cruelly  outraged,  injured,  and  oppressed  in  both 
sexes  ;  and  I  impeach  him  in  the  name  and  by  virtue  of  those 
eternal  laws  of  justice  which  ought  equally  to  pervade  every  age, 


294  BURKE 

condition,  rank,  and  situation  in  the  world." — Impeachment  of 
Hastings. 

"  Such  is  the  republic  to  which  we  are  going  to  give  a  place  in 
civilized  fellowship  ;.  the  republic  which,  with  joint  consent,  we 
are  going  to  establish  in  the  centre  of  Europe,  in  a  port  that  over- 
looks and  commands  every  other  state  and  which  eminently  con- 
fronts and  menaces  this  kingdom.  You  may  call  this  faction 
which  has  eradicated  the  monarchy — expelled  the  proprietary, 
persecuted  religion,  trampled  upon  law — you  may  call  this  France 
if  you  please  :  but  of  the  ancient  France  nothing  remains  but  the 
central  geography;  its  iron  frontier';  its  spirit  of  ambition  ;  its 
audacity  of  enterprise  ;  its  perplexing  intrigue.  These  and  these 
alone  remain.  All  the  former  correctives,  whether  of  virtue  or 
of  weakness,  which  existed  in  the  old  monarchy  are  gone.  No 
single  corrective  is  to  be  found  in  the  whole  body  of  the  new  re- 
public— a  republic  not  of  simple  husbandmen  or  fishermen,  but 
of  intriguers  and  of  warriors — a  republic  of  a  character  the  most 
restless,  the  most  enterprising,  the  most  impious,  the  most  fierce 
and  bloody,  the  most  hypocritical  and  perfidious,  the  most  bold 
and  daring  that  ever  has  been  seen  or  indeed  that  can  be  con- 
ceived to  exist." — Thoughts  on  a  Regicide  Peace. 

"  I  call  it  atheism  by  establishment  when  any  state  shall  not  ac- 
knowledge the  existence  of  God  as  a  moral  governor  of  the  world  ; 
when  it  shall  offer  to  him  no  religious  or  moral  worship  ;  when  it 
shall  abolish  the  Christian  religion  by  decree  ;  when  it  shall  perse- 
cute with  a  cold,  unrelenting,  steady  cruelty,  by  every  mode  of 
confiscation  and  imprisonment,  exile,  and  death,  all  its  minis- 
ters ;  when  it  shall  generally  shut  up  or  pull  down  the  churches  ; 
when,  in  the  place  of  that  religion  of  social  benevolence  and  in- 
dividual self-denial,  in  mockery  of  all  religion,  it  shall  institute 
impious,  blasphemous,  indecent  rites,  in  honour  of  their  vitiated, 
perverted  reason,  and  erect  altars  to  the  personification  of  their 
own  corrupted  and  bloody  republic  ;  when  schools  and  semi- 
naries are  founded  at  the  public  expense  to  poison  mankind  from 
generation  to  generation  with  the  horrible  maxims  of  this  im- 
piety ;  when,  wearied  out  with  incessant  martyrdom  and  the 
cries  of  a  people  hungering  and  thirsting  for  religion,  they  permit 
it  only  as  a  tolerated  evil — I  call  this  atheism  by  establishment." 
—  Thoughts  on  a  Regicide  Peace. 


BURKE  295 

2.  Profuse,    Sometimes   Excessive,   Imagery.  - 

He  had,  as  Brougham  says,  "an  imagination  marvellously  quick 
to  descry  unthought-of  resemblances."  Yet  he  rarely  if  ever 
uses  a  trope  merely  for  the  purpose  of  ornament.  De  Quincey 
grows  impatient  with  "  the  long-eared  race  of  Burke's  critics," 
who  have  understood  him,  "  not  as  thinking  in  and  by  his  fig- 
ures, but  as  deliberately  laying  them  on  by  way  of  enamel  or 
after-ornament,"  and  declares  that  Burke  "  was  a  man  of  fancy 
in  no  other  sense  than  as  Lord  Bacon  was  so,  and  Jeremy  Taylor, 
and  as  all  large  and  discursive  thinkers  must  be."  It  is  this  rare 
power  of  figurative  illumination  that  accounts  for  the  fact,  stated 
by  Craik,  that  "  the  writings  of  Burke  are,  indeed,  the  only 
English  political  writings  of  a  past  age  that  continue  to  be  read 
in  the  present."  This  "creative  richness  of  imagination  " 
appears  in  every  one  of  his  writings.  "  He  had,"  says  Ma- 
caulay,  "in  the  highest  degree  that  noble  faculty  whereby 
man  is  able  to  live  in  the  past  and  in  the  future,  in  the  distant 
and  the  unreal."  C.  A.  Goodrich  joins  De  Quincey  in  de- 
fending Burke  against  Fox's  charge  of  floridity,  and  says  that 
"a  large  part  of  his  imagery  is  not  liable  to  any  censure  of 
this  kind  ;  many  of  his  figures  are  so  finely  wrought  into  the 
texture  of  his  style  that  we  hardly  think  of  them  as  figures  at 
all."  T.  W.  Hunt  accounts  for  this  trait,  in  part,  by  Burke's 
age  and  nationality :  "In  proneness  to  satire  and  fondness  for 
imagery  and  romance  he  was  a  true  Celt.  .  .  .  The  age 
was  agitative.  All  was  aglow  and  ablaze."  The  sources 
from  which  Burke  drew  his  figures  are  marvellously  wide. 
History,  art,  science,  literature,  every  profession,  every  trade 
is  made  to  bear  ready  and  continual  tribute  to  the  wonderful 
treasure-house  of  his  fancy. 

' '  The  great  element  of  power  in  Burke,  over  and  above  what 
he  has  in  common  with  Macaulay,  is  his  extravagant  splendor 
of  imagery.  .  .  .  Like  Carlyle,  he  makes  abundant  use 
both  of  tropes  and  explicit  figures.  He  is  especially  rich  in 
metaphor.  He  has  been  called  '  the  greatest  master  of  met- 


296  BURKE 

aphor  the  world  has  ever  known,'  and  if  we  except  Carlyle, 
we  may  allow  that  he  is  the  most  metaphorical  of  our  prose 
writers.  .  .  .  His  extravagant  imagery  rises  to  the  wild- 
est pitch  in  his  ungovernable  moments." — Minto. 

"  Burke' s  profusion  of  figurative  language  has  been  the 
theme  of  endless  admiration.  His  mind  was  a  repertory  of 
things  generally  known  concerning  history,  sciences,  profes- 
sions, manufactures,  handicrafts ;  and  he  drew  illustrations 
from  all  classes  of  subjects  in  his  multifarious  knowledge. 
The  framework  of  what  Burke  had  to  say  was  too 
thickly  overlaid  with  Asiatic  ornament.  His  natural  ardor 
always  impelled  him  to  clothe  his  conclusions  and  to  express 
them  in  glowing  and  exaggerated  phrases :  .  .  .  The 
great  offender  and  burden  was  that  imagination,  .  .  . 
bringing  in  all  conceivable  wealth  of  imagery,  accumulating 
figures,  and  extending  illustrations  till  they  become  a  dazzling 
and  bewildering  veil  of  light,  hiding  the  process,  progress, 
and  the  very  gist  of  the  argument." — -John  Morley. 

"  It  is  true,  however,  that,  in  some  rare  cases,  Burke  did  in- 
dulge himself  in  a  pure  rhetorician's  use  of  fancy,  consciously 
and  profusely  lavishing  his  ornaments  for  mere  purposes  of 
effect.  There  are  many  such  cases." — De  Quincey. 

"  In  debate,  images  and  illustrations  rose  to  his  lips  with 
a  spontaneous  redundance  that  astonished  his  hearers." 
—  W.E.H.  Lecky. 

"  The  wheels  of  his  imagination  did  not  catch  fire  from  the 
rottenness  of  the  materials,  but  from  the  rapidity  of  their  mo- 
tion. He  most  frequently  produced  an  effect  by  the  remote- 
ness and  novelty  of  his  combinations,  by  force  of  contrast, 
by  the  striking  manner  in  which  the  most  opposite  and  un- 
promising materials  were  harmoniously  blended  together ;  not 
by  laying  his  hands  on  all  the  fine  things  he  could  think  of, 
but  by  bringing  together  those  things  which  he  knew  would 
blaze  out  into  glorious  light  by  their  collision.  The  florid  style 
is  a  mixture  of  affectation  and  commonplace.  Burke's  was  a 


BURKE  297 

union  of  untamable  vigor  and  originality.  .  .  .  He  was 
completely  carried  away  by  his  subject.  He  had  no  other 
object  but  to  produce  the  strongest  impression  on  his  reader, 
by  giving  the  truest,  the  most  characteristic,  the  fullest,  and 
the  most  forcible  description  of  things,  trusting  to  the  power  of 
his  own  mind  to  mould  them  into  grace  and  beauty.  He  did 
not  produce  a  splendid  effect  by  setting  fire  to  the  light  vapors 
that  float  in  the  regions  of  fancy.  .  .  .  His  gold  was  not 
the  less  valuable  for  being  wrought  into  elegant  shapes  and 
richly  embossed  with  curious  figures  ;  the  solidity 

of  a  building  is  not  destroyed  by  adding  to  it  beauty  and  or- 
nament, .  .  .  and  the  strength  of  a  man's  understanding 
is  not  always  to  be  estimated  in  exact  proportion  to  his  power 
of  imagination.  .  .  .  Burke  was  so  far  from  being  a 
gaudy  or  flowery  writer,  that  he  was  one  of  the  severest  writers 
we  have.  .  .  .  He  unites  every  extreme  and  every  va- 
riety of  composition  ;  the  lowest  and  meanest  words  with  the 
highest.  He  excels  in  the  display  of  power,  in  showing  the 
extent,  the  force,  and  the  intensity  of  his  ideas ;  he  is  led  on 
by  the  mere  impulse  and  vehemence  of  his  fancy,  not  by  the 
affectation  of  dazzling  his  readers  by  gaudy  conceits  or  pom- 
pous images.  .  .  .  The  '  Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Bedford  ' 
is  the  most  delightful  exhibition  of  wild  and  brilliant  fancy 
that  is  to  be  found  in  English  prose,  but  it  is  too  much  like 
a  beautiful  picture  painted  upon  gauze ;  it  wants  something 
to  support  it.  '  The  Regicide  Peace '  is  without  ornament, 
but  it  has  all  the  solidarity,  the  might,  the  gravity  of  a 
judicial  record.  It  seems  to  have  been  written  with  a  cer- 
tain constraint  upon  himself  and  to  show  those  who  said  he 
could  not  reason  that  his  arguments  might  be  stripped  of 
their  ornaments  without  losing  anything  of  their  force." 
— Hazlitt. 

"  A  robe  of  brocaded  damask  is  splendid,  sumptuous,  and 
appropriate  to  noble  public  occasions,  but  it  is  scarcely  flexi- 
ble. ' '  — Edmund  Gosse. 


298  BURKE 

"He  rarely  employs   simile,  but   delights    in    metaphor. 
He  is  rich,  and  even  lavish,  in  the  use  of  imagery  ; 
but  this  is  never  introduced  for  the  sake  of  ostentatious  dis- 
play, but  in  order  to  enforce  or  illustrate  an  argument.  "- 
J.  B.  Robertson. 

"  There  is  a  foam  on  its  [the  stream  of  his  eloquence]  ed- 
dies, mud  in  its  bed  ;  thousands  of  strange  creatures  sport 
wildly  on  its  surface  ;  he  does  not  select,  he  lavishes  ;  he  casts 
forth  by  myriads  his  multiplied  '  fancies,  emphases,  harsh 
words,  declamation,  and  apostrophes,  jests  and  execrations, 
the  whole  grotesque  or  horrible  assemblage  of  the  distant 
regions  and  populous  cities  which  his  unwearied  learning  or 
fancy  has  traversed." — Taine. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Astronomers  have  supposed  that  if  a  certain  comet,  whose 
path  intercepted  the  ecliptic,  had  met  the  earth  in  some  (I  forget 
which)  sign,  it  would  have  whirled  us  along  with  it  in  its  eccen- 
tric course  into  God  knows  what  regions  of  heat  and  cold.  Had 
the  portentous  comet  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  which  from  its  horrid 
hair  shakes  pestilence  and  war,  and  with  fear  of  change  per- 
plexes monarchs — had  that  comet  crossed  upon  us  in  that  inter- 
nal state  of  England,  nothing  human  could  have  prevented  our 
being  hurried  out  of  the  highway  of  heaven  into  all  the  vices, 
crimes,  and  miseries  of  the  French  Revolution." — Reflections  on 
the  Revolution  in  France. 

"So  long  as  the  well-compacted  structure  of  our  Church  and 
State,  the  sanctuary,  the  holy  of  holies,  of  that  ancient  law,  de- 
fended by  reverence,  defended  by  power — a  fortress  at  once  and 
a  temple — shall  stand  unviolate  on  the  brow  of  the  British  Lion  ; 
as  long  as  the  British  monarchy,  not  more  limited  than  fenced  by 
the  orders  of  the  state,  shall,  like  the  proud  keep  of  Windsor, 
rising  in  majesty  of  proportion  and  girt  with  a  double  belt  of  its 
kindred  and  coeval  towers — as  long  as  this  awful  structure  shall 
oversee  and  guard  this  subjected  land,  so  long  the  mounds  and 
dykes  of  the  low,  flat  Bedford  level  will  have  nothing  to  fear  from 


BURKE  299 

all  the  pickaxes  of  all  the  levellers  in  France." — Reflections  on  the 
Revolution  in  France. 

"The  grants  to  the  House  of  Russell  were  so  enormous  as  not 
only  to  outrage  economy  but  even  to  stagger  credibility.  The 
Duke  of  Bedford  is  the  leviathan  among  all  the  creatures  of  the 
crown.  .  .  .  He  plays  and  frolics  in  the  ocean  of  the  royal 
bounty.  Huge  as  he  is,  and  while  he  lies  '  floating  many  a 
rood,'  he  is  still  a  creature.  His  ribs,  his  fins,  his  whalebone,  his 
blubber,  the  very  spiracles  through  which  he  spouts  a  torrent  of 
brine  against  his  origin  and  covers  me  all  over  with  the  spray — 
everything  of  him  and  about  him  is  from  the  throne." — Letter  to 
a  Noble  Lord. 


3.  Invective— Coarseness— Ridicule. — Burke's  mind 
was  eminently  satirical.  In  his  earlier  writings  this  quality 
took  the  form  of  dignified  irony  ;  but  the  stings  and  insults  to 
which  he  was  subjected  in  later  years  caused  him  to  retort  in 
the  fiercest  invective,  often  unpardonably  coarse.  Taine  speaks 
of  "  the  trumpet-blast  of  his  curses,"  and  declares  that  Burke 
had  no  taste.  Like  Swift,  he  is  too  intensely  in  earnest  to  make 
elegance  an  end  in  his  writing.  He  is  a  striking  illustration 
of  the  truth,  that  in  literature,  as  in  architecture,  grace  and 
force  sometimes  vary  inversely  with  each  other.  "If,"  says 
John  Morley,  "  anyone  has  imbued  himself  with  that  exact- 
ing love  of  delicacy,  measure,  and  taste  in  expression,  which 
was,  until  our  own  day,  a  sacred  tradition  of  the  French,  then 
he  will  not  like  Burke.  .  .  .  The  thought  of  wrong  or 
misery  moved  him  less  to  pity  for  the  victim  than  to  anger 
against  the  cause.  He  has  some  gratuitous  and  unredeemed 
vulgarity;  some  images  whose  barbarity  makes  us  shudder. " 
Even  Macaulay  admits  that  his  debates  on  the  Regency  were 
marked  by  "asperity  and  indecency."  Minto  observes  that 
"  whenever  Burke  wishes  to  cover  anything  with  ridicule,  his 
words  are  taken  from  every-day  speech  and  his  figures  from 
the  commonest  objects."  But  even  the  righteous  ends  that 
Burke  had  in  view  fail  to  excuse  the  outrageous  coarseness  of 


3OO  BURKE 

some  of  his  invective.  He  calls  Hastings  "a  wallowing 
sow,"  "  the  keeper  of  a  pig-sty,  wallowing  in  filth  and  cor- 
ruption ;  "  and  the  like. 

"If  by  wit  be  meant  any  of  its  forms  compatible  with 
fierce  invective,  his  speeches  abound  with  innumerable  speci- 
mens of  the  highest  merit.  .  .  .  He  does  not  scruple  to 
make  the  most  grossly  offensive  comparisons  in  the  plainest 
terms.  .  .  .  He  made  abundant  use  of  the  weapon  of 
ridicule.  .  .  .  We  cannot  suppose  that  he  ever  indulged 
in  it  [abuse  or  ridicule]  without  to  some  extent  bullying  his 
artistic  as  well  as  his  prudential  conscience." — Minto. 

"  He  indulges  in  bitter  invective  mingled  with  poignant 
wit,  but  descending  often  to  abuse  and  even  scurrility  ;  he  is 
apt,  moreover,  to  carry  an  attack  too  far,  to  slay  the  slain, 
or  to  mingle  and  dilute  the  reader's  contempt  with  pity." — 
Brougham. 

"There  appeared  more  of  study  than  of  truth,  more  of 
invective  than  of  justice,  and,  in  short,  so  little  proof  to  so 
great  passion  that  in  a  very  short  time,  I,  who  had  been 
overpowered  by  his  eloquence,  began  to  lift  up  my  head ; 
.  and  before  I  was  myself  aware  of  the  declension  of 
Mr.  Burke's  powers  over  my  feelings,  I  found  myself  looking 
all  around  with  my  opera-glass  in  hand." — Miss  Bitrney 
[describing  the  speech  against  Hastings]. 

"  It  is  no  use  for  him  to  study  Cicero  and  to  confine  his 
dashing  force  in  the  orderly  channels  of  Latin  rhetoric  ;  he 
continues  half  a  barbarian.  .  .  .  We  give  way  to  him, 
and  see  in  his  outbursts  only  the  outpourings  of  a  great  heart 
and  a  deep  mind,  too  open  and  too  full ;  and  we  wonder 
with  a  sort  of  strange  veneration  at  this  extraordinary  outflow, 
impetuous  as  a  torrent,  broad  as  a  sea,  in  which  the  inex- 
haustible variety  of  color  and  form  undulates  beneath  the  sun 
of  a  splendid  imagination,  which  lends  to  this  muddy  surge 
all  the  brilliancy  of  its  rays." — Tame. 

"  Though  a  most  skilful  and  penetrating  critic,  and  though 


BURKE  301 

his  English  style  is  one  of  the  very  finest  in  the  language,  his 
taste  was  not  pure ;  even  his  best  writings  are  sometimes  dis- 
figured by  strangely  coarse  and  repulsive  images ;  and  gross 
violations  of  taste  seem  to  have  been  frequent  in  his  speeches." 
—  W.  E.  H.  Lecky. 

"It  is  distressing  to  see  this  master  of  the  English  lan- 
guage descending  to  scurrilities  unworthy  of  a  fish-wife  and 
relinquishing  all  remnants  of  judgment,  decorum,  reason,  and 
good  sense  in  ravings  about  the  tyrannies  of  a  regicide  Jaco- 
binism."  — Edimmd  Gosse. 

"  He  was  terrible  as  well  as  offensive  in  the  coarseness  of 
his  epithets  ;  would  come  down  upon  his  adversary  and  stab 
him  through  with  a  rough,  rusty  blade,  which  he  picked  up 
for  the  purpose  out  of  the  filth  of  the  gutter." — -John  Morley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Benfield,  a  criminal,  who  long  since  ought  to  have  fattened 
the  region  kites  with  his  offal,  is  by  his  Majesty's  ministers  en- 
throned in  the  government  of  a  great  kingdom." — Nabob  of  Ar- 
cofs  Debts. 

"  I  find  no  man  who  has  remained  in  that  more  than  stoical 
apathy  but  the  Prince  de  Conti.  This  mean,  stupid,  selfish, 
swinish,  and  cowardly  animal,  universally  known  and  despised 
as  such,  has  been  perfectly  neutral,  except  in  one  abortive  at- 
tempt to  elope." — Policy  of  the  Allies. 

"  What  was  the  event  ?  A  strange  uncouth  thing  [Napoleon], 
a  theatrical  figure  of  the  opera,  his  head  shaded  with  three-col- 
oured plumes,  strutted  from  the  back  scenes,  and,  after  a  short 
speech,  in  the  mock-heroic  falsetto  of  stupid  tragedy,  delivered 
the  gentleman  fan  English  messenger]  into  the  custody  of  a 
guard,  .  .  .  and  ordered  him  to  be  sent  from  Paris  in  two 
hours." — Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace. 

"  That  debt  forms  the  foul  putrid  mucus  in  which  are  engen- 
dered the  whole  brood  of  ascarides,  all  the  endless  involutions, 
the  eternal  knot  added  to  knot  of  those  inexpugnable  tape-worms 
which  devour  the  nutriment  and  eat  up  the  bowels  of  India." — 
Nabob  of  Arcofs  Debts. 


302  BURKE 

"With  six  great  chopping  bastards,  each  as  lusty  as  an  infant 
Hercules,  this  delicate  creature  [Hon.  Henry  Dundas]  blushes 
at  the  sight  of  his  new  bridegroom  and  assumes  a  virgin  deli- 
cacy ;  or,  to  use  a  more  fit  as  well  as  a  more  poetic  comparison, 
the  person  so  squeamish,  so  timid,  so  trembling  lest  the  winds 
of  heaven  should  visit  too  roughly,  is  expanded  to  broad  sun- 
shine, exposed  like  the  sow  of  imperial  augury,  lying  in  the  mud 
with  all  the  prodigies  of  her  fertility  about  her,  as  evidence  of 
her  delicate  amours." — Nabob  of  Arcofs  Debts. 

4.  Mental  and  Moral  Elevation. — In  all  his  political 
conceptions  Burke  was  lofty  and  majestic.  He  was  an  intel- 
lectual Titan.  He  had  no  taste  for  discussing  what  was  puerile 
or  trifling,  and  when  compelled  to  do  so,  as  Croly  says,  "  He 
winged  his  tempest  'gainst  a  turnpike  bill."  Johnson  de- 
clares that  one  could  not  meet  Burke  casually  for  five  minutes 
in  the  street  without  becoming  aware  that  he  was  a  remark- 
able man,  while  Maurice  says,  "  To  read  him  makes  us  ac- 
knowledge that  we  are  small  men."  Here,  especially,  "  the 
style  is  the  man."  In  an  age  when  English  political  corrup- 
tion reached  its  climax,  Edmund  Burke  remained  "  a  pure, 
conscientious,  upright  man."  Taine  tells  us  that  "  he  based 
human  society  on  maxims  of  morality,  insisted  on  a  high  and 
pure  tone  of  feeling  in  the  conduct  of  public  business,  and 
seemed  to  have  undertaken  to  raise  and  authorize  the  generos- 
ity of  the  human  heart.  He  fought  nobly  for  noble  causes  ; 
against  the  crimes  of  power  in  England,  the  crimes  of  the 
people  in  France,  the  crimes  of  monopolists  in  India."  John 
Morley  says  that  Burke's  style  is  "  noble,  earnest,  deep-flow- 
ing, because  his  sentiment  was  lofty  and  fervid."  T.  W. 
Hunt  compares  Burke  to  Milton  and  Homer,  and  adds:  "  He 
was  specially  fond  of  discussing  high  themes — his  brow  was 
massive  and  so  was  his  soul.  There  is  something  about 
Burke's  prose  that  is  majestic  and  magisterial — a  kind  of  judi- 
cial gravity  everywhere  apparent,  that  makes  it  impossible  for 
a  man  to  be  any  other  than  in  sober  earnest  as  he  peruses  it 


BURKE  303 

— the  embodiment  of  nobility  and  unselfishness  in  human 
nature." 

"He  made  himself  everywhere  the  champion  of  principle 
and  the  persecutor  of  vice;  and  men  saw  him  bring  to  the 
attack  all  the  forces  of  his  wonderful  knowledge,  his  lofty  rea- 
son, his  splendid  style,  with  the  unwearying  and  untempered 
ardor  of  a  "moralist  and  a  knight." — Taine. 

"There  is  no  public  man  whose  character  was  in  all  re- 
spects more  transparently  pure.  Weak  health  and  deep  and 
fervent  religious  principles  saved  him  from  the  temptations  of 
youth ;  and  amid  all  the  vicissitudes  and  corruption  of  poli- 
tics his  heart  never  lost  its  warmth  or  his  conscience  its  sensi- 
tiveness. ...  In  the  higher  moral  qualities  of  public  as 
of  private  life  he  has  not  often  been  surpassed.  That  loyal  af- 
fection with  which  he  clung  through  his  whole  life  to  the 
friends  of  his  early  youth  ;  that  genuine  kindness  which  made 
him  when  still  a  poor  man  the  munificent  patron  of  Barry  and 
Crabbe;  .  .  .  that  stainless  purity  and  retiring  modesty 
of  nature  which  made  his  domestic  life  so  different  from 
that  of  some  of  the  greatest  of  his  contemporaries  ;  that  depth 
of  feeling  which  made  the  loss  of  his  only  son  the  death-knell 
of  the  whole  happiness  of  his  life,  may  be  traced  in  every 
stage  of  his  public  career.  Fidelity  to  his  engagements,  a 
disinterested  pursuit  of  what  he  believed  to  be  right,  in  spite 
of  all  the  allurements  of  interest  and  popularity  ;  a  deep  and 
ardent  hatred  of  oppression  and  cruelty  in  every  form ;  a 
readiness  at  all  times  to  sacrifice  personal  pretensions  to  party 
interests  ;  a  capacity  of  devoting  long  years  of  thankless  labor 
to  the  service  of  those  he  had  never  seen,  and  who  could  nev- 
er reward  him,  were  the  characteristics  of  his  life." — W.  E. 
H.  Lecky. 

"  One  great  feature  in  his  statesmanship  was  his  consistent 
endeavor  to  introduce  into  the  conduct  of  affairs,  between 
nation  and  nation,  higher  principles  of  morality." — Minio. 

"  The  greatness  of  Burke  as  a  thinker  cannot  be  adequately 


304  BURKE 

appreciated  without  noticing  the  nobility  of  his  moral  char- 
acter. ...  A  noble  unselfishness  stamps  all  his  efforts." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"The  worst  event  of  this  day,  though  it  may  deject,  shall  not 
break  or  subdue  me.  The  call  upon  us  is  authoritative.  Let  who 
will  shrink  back,  I  shall  be  found  at  my  post.  Baffled,  discoun- 
tenanced, subdued,  discredited,  as  the  cause  of  justice  and  hu- 
manity is,  it  will  only  be  the  dearer  to  me.  Whoever,  therefore, 
shall  at  any  time  bring  before  you  anything  towards  the  relief  of 
our  distressed  fellow-citizens  in  India  and  towards  a  subversion 
of  the  present  most  corrupt  and  oppressive  system  for  its  govern- 
ment, in  me  shall  find  a  weak  (I  am  afraid)  but  a  steady,  ear- 
nest, and  faithful  assistant." — The  Nabob  of  Arcofs  Debts. 

"  The  people  are  right.  The  calculation  of  money  profit  in  all 
wars  is  false.  On  balancing  the  account  of  such  wars,  ten  thou- 
sand hogsheads  of  sugar  are  purchased  at  ten  thousand  times  their 
price.  The  blood  of  man  should  never  be  shed  but  to  redeem 
the  blood  of  man.  It  is  well  shed  for  our  family,  for  our  friends, 
for  our  country,  for  our  God,  for  our  kind  :  the  rest  is  vanity  ; 
the  rest  is  crime." — Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace. 

"  I  have  little  to  recommend  my  opinions  but  long  observa- 
tion and  much  impartiality.  They  come  from  one  who  has  been 
no  tool  of  power,  no  flatterer  of  greatness  ;  and  who,  in  his  last 
act,  does  not  wish  to  belie  the  tenor  of  his  life."— Reflections  on 
the  Revolution  in  France. 

"No  man  lives  too  long  who  lives  to  do  with  spirit,  and  suffer 
with  resignation  what  Providence  pleases  to  command,  or  in- 
flict ;  but  indeed  they  are  sharp  incommodities  which  beset  old 
age." — Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord. 

5.  Erudition— Vast  Knowledge. — "  No  man  of  sense 
could  meet  Burke  under  a  gateway,  to  avoid  a  shower,  with- 
out being  convinced  that  he  was  the  first  man  in  England. 
His  stream  of  talk  is  perpetual ;  and  he  does  not  talk  from  any 
desire  of  distinction,  but  because  his  mind  is  full. 
Take  up  whatever  topic  you  please,  he  is  ready  to  meet  you." 
— -Johnson. 


BURKE  305 

"Dr.  Smith,  of  Oxford,  after  spending  several  years  upon 
a  theory  in  chemistry,  came  up  to  London  only  to  find  that 
Burke,  the  politician,  had  anticipated  him  by  some  years." 
—Buckle. 

' '  Possessed  of  most  extensive  knowledge,  and  that  of  the 
most  various  description,  acquainted  alike  with  what  different 
classes  of  men  knew,  each  in  his  own  province,  and  with 
much  that  one  hardly  ever  thought  of  learning,  he  could  either 
bring  his  masses  of  information  to  bear  directly  upon  the  sub- 
jects to  which  they  severally  belonged,  or  he  could  avail  him- 
self of  them  generally  to  strengthen  his  faculties  or  enlarge 
his  views,  or  he  could  turn  any  portion  of  them  to  account 
for  the  purpose  of  enlarging  his  theme  or  enriching  his  dic- 
tion. .  .  .  When  Burke  is  handling  any  one  matter  we 
perceive  that  we  are  conversing  with  a  reasoner  or  a  teacher, 
to  whom  almost  every  other  branch  of  knowledge  is  familiar." 
— Brougham. 

"  There  are  few  men  whose  depth  and  versatility  have  been 
so  fully  recognized  by  their  contemporaries.  Adam  Smith 
declared  that  he  had  found  no  other  man  who,  without  com- 
munication, had  thought  out  the  same  conclusions  on  political 
economy  as  himself.  Winstanley,  the  Camden  Professor  of 
Ancient  History,  bore  witness  to  his  knowledge  of  philosophy, 
history,  filiation  of  languages,  and  the  principles  of  etymo- 
logical deduction.  ...  No  other  politician  or  writer 
has  thrown  the  light  of  so  penetrating  a  genius  on  the  nature 
and  workings  of  the  British  Constitution,  has  impressed  his 
principles  so  deeply  upon  both  the  great  parties  in  the  state, 
and  has  left  behind  him  a  richer  treasure  of  political  wisdom 
applicable  to  all  countries  and  to  all  times.  .  .  .  Take 
up  what  you  please,  he  is  ready  to  meet  you.  His  intellect- 
ual energy  was  fully  commensurate  with  his  knowledge,  and 
he  had  rare  powers  of  bringing  illustrations  and  methods 
of  reasoning  derived  from  many  spheres  to  bear  on  any  sub- 
ject he  touched,  and  of  combining  an  extraordinary  natural  fa- 


306  BURKE 

cility  with  most  untiring  and  fastidious  labor." — II'.  E.  H. 
Lecky. 

"  He  brought  his  subject  along  with  him ;  he  drew  his 
material  from  himself.  The  only  limits  which  circumscribed 
his  variety  were  the  stores  of  his  own  mind.  His  stock  of 
ideas  did  not  consist  of  a  few  meagre  facts  meagrely  stated, 
of  half  a  dozen  commonplaces  tortured  into  a  thousand  dif- 
ferent ways ;  but  his  mine  of  wealth  was  a  profound  under- 
standing, inexhaustible  as  the  human  heart  and  various  as  the 
sources  of  human  nature.  He  therefore  encircled  every  sub- 
ject to  which  he  applied  himself,  and  new  subjects  were  only 
the  occasions  of  calling  forth  fresh  powers  of  mind  which  had 
not  been  before  exerted." — Hazlitt. 

"  He  was  well  versed  in  Greek  and  Latin  literature,  was 
familiar  with  the  great  masters  of  his  own  language,  and  had 
read  the  best  models  of  the  French.  Ancient  and  modern 
history  he  had  deeply  studied  ;  he  was  an  admirable  connois- 
seur in  art;  and  he  was  not  unfamiliar  with  some  of  the 
natural  sciences.  To  theology  and  philosophy  he  paid  con- 
siderable attention.  His  acquaintance  with  English  law  as- 
tonished professional  men  themselves,  while  from  the  Roman 
jurisprudence  he  not  unfrequently  drew  happy  illustrations  ; 
and,  as  is  said  of  Shakespeare,  he  loved  to  converse  with 
laborers  and  mechanics  about  their  trades.  He  was  a  skilful, 
practical  agriculturist ;  in  matters  of  commerce  and  finance 
he  was  exceedingly  well  versed,  and  in  the  whole  science  of 
economics  he  was  far  beyond  his  age." — J.  B.  Robertson. 

11  His  speeches  abounded  in  imagery,  philanthropy,  wis- 
dom, all  the  noblest  characteristics  of  his  genius. 
His  mind  was  a  repertory  of  things  generally  known  concern- 
ing history,  professions,  manufactures,  handicrafts ;  and  he 
drew  illustrations  from  all  classes  of  subjects  in  his  multi- 
farious knowledge." — Minto. 

"  He  knew  how  the  whole  world  lived.  Everything  con- 
tributed to  this :  his  vast  desultory  reading ;  his  education, 


BURKE  307 

neither  wholly  a-  ademical  nor  entirely  professional  ;  his  long 
years  of  apprenticeship  in  the  service  of  knowledge  ;  his  wan- 
derings up  and  down  the  country ;  his  vast  conversational 
powers  ;  his  enormous  correspondence  with  all  sorts  of  people  ; 
his  unfailing  interest  in  all  pursuits.  .  .  .  His  writings 
are  a  storehouse  of  wisdom,  the  noble,  animating  wisdom  of 
one  who  has  the  poet's  heart  as  well  as  the  statesman's  brain." 
—  Augustine  Birrell. 

"He  entered  Parliament,  .  .  .  having  had  time  to 
train  himself  thoroughly  in  all  matters;  acquainted  with  law, 
history,  philosophy,  literature — master  of  such  a  universal  eru- 
dition that  he  has  been  compared  to  Bacon." — Taine. 

"  His  learning  is  so  various  and  extensive  that  we  might 
praise  it  for  its  range  and  compass  were  it  not  still  more  praise- 
worthy for  its  solidity  and  depth." — Thomas  Campbell. 

"  Considered  simply  as  a  master  of  English  prose,  Burke  has 
not,  in  my  judgment,  been  surpassed  in  any  period  of  our 
literature.  His  speeches,  literally  speaking,  are  the  only  English 
speeches  which  may  still  be  read  with  profit  when  the  hearer 
and  speaker  have  long  been  turned  to  dust.  .  .  .  Burke 
stands  alone  in  his  generation  for  the  combination  of  width 
of  view  with  deepness  of  sympathy.  Thinking  of  the  mass, 
he  never  forgets  the  individual.  .  .  .  Incomparably  the 
greatest  intellectual  power  of  all  English  politicians,  the  life 
and  soul  of  his  party  for  some  years." — Leslie  Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  In  Russia  it  is  not  held  respectful  to  call  the  priests  papas, 
their  true  and  ancient  appellation,  but  those  who  wish  to  address 
them  with  civility  always  call  them  hieromonachi." — Penal  Laws. 

"We  know  little  of  Sesostris  but  that  he  led  an  army  of  900,- 
ooo  men  out  of  Egypt  and  overran  the  Mediterranean  coast  as  far 
as  Colchis.  .  .  .  The  next  personage  who  figures  in  the 
tragedy  of  the  ancients  is  Semiramis,  for  we  have  no  particulars 
of  Ninus.  .  .  .  Like  the  fleets  of  Xerxes  or  the  armies  of 
Pergamus  and  Syria  in  their  wars  against  the  Scythians,  .  .  . 


3O8  BURKE 

they  all  overlook  us  like  the  malevolent  being  of  the  poet." — The 
Sublime  and  the  Beautiful. 

"  Milk  is  the  first  support  of  our  childhood.  The  component 
parts  of  this  are  water,  oil,  and  a  sort  of  very  sweet  salt  called 
the  sugar  of  milk.  All  these,  when  blended,  have  a  great  smooth- 
ness to  the  taste  and  a  relaxing  quality  to  the  skin.  We  must 
observe  that,  as  smooth  things  are,  as  such,  agreeable  to  the  taste 
and  are  found  of  a  relaxing  quality,  so,  on  the  other  hand,  things 
which  are  found  by  experience  to  be  of  a  strengthening  quality 
and  fit  to  brace  the  fibres,  are  almost  universally  rough  and  pun- 
gent to  the  taste,  and  in  many  cases  even  rough  to  the  skin."- 
The  Sublime  and  the  Beautiful. 

6.  Use  of  Apothegm— Didacticism. — "Burke  will 
always  be  read  with  delight  and  edification,  because,  in  the 
midst  of  discussions,  ...  he  scatters  apothegms  that 
take  us  into  the  region  of  lasting  wisdom.  In  the  midst  of 
the  torrent  of  his  most  strenuous  and  passionate  deliverances, 
he  suddenly  rises  aloof  from  his  immediate  subject  and  reminds 
us  of  some  permanent  relation  of  things,  some  enduring  truth 
of  human  life  or  society.  .  .  .  He  added  much  to  the 
permanent  consideration  of  wise  political  thought  by  his 
maxims.  "—John  Morley. 

11  His  oratorical  impressiveness  was  strongly  connected  with 
the  weight  of  those  maxims  which  he  had  formed  from  a  long 
and  profound  study  of  the  heart  of  man.  And  it  is  the  force 
and  abundance  of  those  fine  reflections  which  give  an  immortal 
value  to  his  works  on  topics  of  the  most  temporary  nature." — 
George  Croly. 

"  He  had  a  peculiar  gift  of  introducing  into  transient  party 
conflicts  observations  drawn  from  the  most  profound  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature,  of  the  first  principles  of  government 
and  legislation.  .  .  .  There  is  perhaps  no  English  writer 
since  Bacon  whose  works  are  so  thickly  starred  with  thought. 
The  time  may  come  when  they  will  be  no  longer  read ;  the 
time  will  never  come  in  which  men  would  not  grow  wiser  by 
reading  them." — W.  E.  H.  Lecky. 


BURKE  309 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  taking  away  of  a  vote  is  the  taking  away  of  the  shield 
which  the  subject  has,  not  only  against  the  oppression  of  power 
but  that  worst  of  all  oppressions,  the  persecution  of  private  so- 
ciety. .  .  .  When  we  are  to  provide  for  the  education  of  any 
body  of  men  we  ought  anxiously  to  consider  the  particular  func- 
tion they  are  to  perform  in  life." — On  the  Penal  Laws. 

"  A  victory  over  real  corruptions  enables  us  to  baffle  spurious 
and  pretended  reformations.  .  .  .  Some  persons,  by  hating 
vice  too  much,  come  to  love  men  too  little.  .  .  .  In  all  bodies, 
those  who  will  lead  must  also  in  a  considerable  sense  follow. 
.  .  .  Nothing  turns  out  to  be  so  oppressive  and  unjust  as  a 
feeble  government.  .  .  .  Never  did  nature  say  one  thing  and 
wisdom  another.  ...  To  innovate  is  not  to  reform.  .  .  . 
Rage  and  frenzy  will  pull  down  more  in  half  an  hour  than  pru- 
dence, deliberation,  and  foresight  can  build  up  in  a  hundred 
years.  .  .  .  The  church  is  the  place  where  one  day's  truce 
surely  ought  to  be  allowed  to  the  dissensions  and  animosities  of 
mankind." — Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France. 

"  But  men  may  be  sorely  touched  and  deeply  grieved  in  their 
privileges  as  well  as  in  their  purses.  Men  may  lose  little  in  prop- 
erty by  the  act  which  takes  away  all  their  freedom.  When  a  man 
is  robbed  of  a  trifle  on  the  highway,  it  is  not  the  two-pence  lost 
that  constitutes  the  capital  outrage.  This  is  not  confined  to 
privileges.  Even  ancient  indulgences  withdrawn,  without  offence 
on  the  part  of  those  who  enjoyed  such  favors,  operate  as  griev- 
ances."—  On  Conciliation  with  America. 

7.  Conservatism — Veneration  for  Ancient  In- 
stitutions.— "An  abhorrence  for  abstract  politics,  a  pre- 
dilection for  aristocracy,  and  a  dread  of  innovation  were 
ever  the  most  sacred  articles  of  his  political  creed.  He  would 
not  abandon  to  the  invasion  of  audacious  novelties  opinions 
which  he  had  received  in  his  youth  and  had  maintained  so 
long — which  had  been  fortified  by  the  applause  of  the  great 
and  the  assent  of  the  wise,  and  which  he  had  supported  against 
so  many  distinguished  opponents." — Sir  James  Mackintosh. 

"  Burke  had  a  constitutional  love  for  old  things;  anything 


310  BURKE 

that  mankind  had  ever  worshipped  or  venerated  or  obeyed 
was  dear  to  him.  .  .  .  With  all  his  passion  for  good 
government,  he  dearly  loved  a  little  rust." — De  Quincey. 

"He  trembled  for  the  fair  fame  of  all  established  things, 
and  to  his  horror  saw  men,  instead  of  covering  the  thin  surface 
with  the  concrete,  digging  in  it  for  abstractions  and  asking 
fundamental  questions  about  the  origin  of  society. 
Burke  was  all  his  life  through  a  passionate  maintainer  of 
the  established  order  of  things  and,  a  ferocious  hater  of  ab- 
stractions and  metaphysical  politics.  Burke  had  a  consti- 
tutional love  for  old  things  simply  because  they  were  old. 
Burke  may  be  called  the  High  Priest  of  Order, 
a  lover  of  settled  ways,  of  justice,  peace,  and  se- 
curity."— Augustine  Birr  ell. 

"  It  was  peculiar  to  him  that,  possessed  of  a  fancy  and  im- 
agination singularly  brilliant — united  with  stores  of  knowl- 
edge of  a  liberal  and  philosophical  turn  of  mind,  added 
to  having  passed  much  time  among  books — all  the  elements 
which  unite  to  compose  a  beautiful  system  and  make  an  im- 
posing theorist,  produced  in  him  a  distinctly  opposite  effect. 
He  would  admit  no  innovating  speculations  into  the  busi- 
ness of  government.  He  professed  to  build  .  .  .  upon 
the  basis  of  history  and  experience.  .  .  .  He  entertained 
for  ancient  institutions  that  respect  and  admiration  which 
all  sober  minds  feel  as  long  (but  no  longer)  as  they  have 
been  productive  of  good.  .  .  .  His  aim  was  to  preserve 
all  our  institutions  in  the  main  as  they  stood  ;  for  the  simple 
reason  that  under  them  the  nation  had  become  good  and 
prosperous  and  happy.  He  would  rather  not  innovate  at  all, 
for  innovation  was  not  reformation :  tooverturn  nothing  which 
had  the  sanction  of  time  and  many  happy  days  in  its  favor,  to 
correct  and  perfect  superstition,  but  to  leave  all  foundations,  the 
antiquity  of  which  formed  a  guarantee  of  their  usefulness  and 
stability  in  general  opinion,  sacred  and  unharmed,  this  was  his 
aim." — -J.  Prior. 


BURKE  311 

"  In  discussing  questions  of  domestic  politics,  he  constantly 
refused  to  travel  beyond  the  landmarks  of  the  constitution  as 
he  found  it  established.  ...  A  constitution  was  with 
him  a  thing  of  life." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  To  his  eye  the  constitution  was  no  makeshift  scaffolding, 
destined  to  speedy  decay,  but  a  venerable  edifice  of  super!) 
architecture  resembling  '  the  proud  keep  of  Windsor,  rising  in 
the  majesty  of  proportion  and  girt  with  the  double  belt  of  its 
kindred  and  coeval  towns.'  " — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  He  held  the  principles  of  conservatism  with  the  zeal  of  a 
Leveller,  and  tempered  lofty  ideas  of  improvement  with  the 
scrupulousness  of  official  routine.  There  is  no  part  of  Burke's 
career  at  which  we  may  not  find  evidence  of  his  instructive 
and  undying  repugnance  to  the  critical  or  revolutionary  spirit 
and  all  its  works." — -John  Morley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

I  reckon  myself  among  the  most  forward  in  my  zeal  for  main- 
taining our  constitution  and  its  principles  in  their  utmost  purity 
and  vigour.  Those  who  are  attached  to  the  constitution  of  this 
kingdom  will  take  good  care  how  they  are  involved  with  persons 
who,  under  a  pretext  of  zeal  toward  the  Revolution  and  constitu- 
tion, too  frequently  wander  from  their  true  principles,  and  are 
ever  ready  to  depart  from  the  firm  but  courteous  and  deliberate 
spirit  which  produced  the  one  and  presides  in  the  other.  .  .  . 
It  is  far  from  true  that  the  right  of  the  king  depends  on  the  will 
of  the  governed,  or  that  we  acquired  a  right  by  the  Revolution  to 
elect  our  own  kings." — Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France. 

"  With  us  the  king  and  the  lords  are  several  and  joint  securi- 
ties for  the  equalities  of  each  district,  each  province,  each  city. 
When  did  you  hear  in  Great  Britain  of  any  province  suffering 
from  the  inequality  of  its  representation  ;  what  district  from  having 
no  representation  at  all  ?  Not  only  our  monarchy  and  our  peer- 
age secure  the  equality  on  which  our  unity  depends,  but  it  is  the 
spirit  of  the  House  of  Commons  itself  The  very  inequality  of 
representation,  which  is  so  foolishly  complained  of,  is  perhaps 
the  very  thing  which  prevents  us  from  thinking  or  acting  as  mem- 


312  BURKE 

bers  for  districts.  Cornwall  elects  as  many  members  as  all  Scot- 
land. But  is  Cornwall  better  taken  care  of  than  Scotland  ?  Few 
trouble  their  heads  about  any  of  your  bases,  out  of  some  giddy 
clubs.  Most  of  those  who  wish  for  any  change,  upon  any  plausi- 
ble grounds,  desire  it  on  different  ideas." — Reflections  on  tke 
Revolution  in  France. 

"  We  must  recall  their  erring  fancies  to  the  acts  of  the  Revolu- 
tion which  we  revere,  for  the  discovery  of  its  true  principles.  If 
the  principles  of  the  Revolution  of  1688  are  anywhere  to  be  found, 
it  is  in  the  statute  called  the  Declaration  of  Rights.  In  that  most 
wise,  sober,  and  considerate  declaration,  drawn  up  by  great  law- 
yers and  great  statesmen,  and  not  by  warm  and  inexperienced  en- 
thusiasts, not  one  word  is  said  nor  one  suggestion  made  of  a  general 
right  to  chose  our  own  governors,  to  cashier  them  for  miscon- 
duct, and  to  form  a  government  for  ourselves." — Reflections  on 
the  Revolution  in  France. 

8.  Catholicity  —  Tolerance.  —  "What  distinguished 
him  from  all  other  men  was  a  wide,  comprehensive  intellect, 
which  .  .  .  seized  the  general  aspect  of  things  and,  be- 
yond text,  constitution,  and  figures,  perceived  the  invisible 
tendency  of  events  and  the  inner  spirit." — Taine. 

"[In  his  argument]  he  moves  on  with  composed  air,  the 
even,  dignified  pace  of  the  historian  ;  and  unfolds  his  facts  in  a 
narrative  so  easy  and  yet  so  correct,  that  you  plainly  perceive 
that  he  wanted  only  the  dismissal  of  other  pursuits  to  have 
rivalled  Livy  or  Hume." — Brougham. 

"  His  great  and  peculiar  distinction  was  that  he  viewed  all 
objects  of  the  understanding  under  more  relations  than  other 
men,  and  under  more  complex  relations." — De  Quincey. 

"There  was  a  catholicity  about  his  gaze.  .  .  .  He 
saw  all  sides  of  a  subject." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  In  all  things,  while  he  deeply  reverenced  principles,  he 
chose  to  deal  with  the  concrete  more  than  with  abstractions; 
he  studied  men  rather  than  man.  .  .  .  The  principles 
of  toleration  ever  found  in  him  a  powerful  advocate,  and  he 
was  ever  zealous  to  remove  imperfections  and  correct  abuses 


BURKE  313 

in  the  establishment,  as  the  best  means  of  securing  its  per- 
manent existence.  .  .  .  The  mere  fact  that  toward  the 
close  of  a  tolerably  long  career  he  should  still  have  kept  his 
mind  sufficiently  open  to  perceive  and  his  honesty  sufficiently 
vigorous  to  cleave  to  the  new  and  barely  suspected  deductions 
from  his  principles  which  the  French  Revolution  forced  upon 
him,  is  worth  taking  into  account  when  we  hear  that  Burke 
had  too  much  of  the  unflinching  party-man  about  him  to  be 
a  true  thinker." — -John  Morley. 

"  He  believed  that  the  interests  of  men  in  society  should 
be  consulted  and  their  several  stations  and  employments  as- 
signed, with  a  view  to  their  nature,  not  as  physical  but  as 
moral  beings,  so  as  to  nourish  their  hopes,  to  lift  their  imagi- 
nation, to  enliven  their  fancy,  to  rouse  their  activity,  to 
strengthen  their  virtue,  and  to  furnish  the  greatest  number  of 
objects  of  present  and  future  means  of  enjoyment  to  beings 
constituted  as  man  is,  consistently  with  the  order  and  stability 
of  the  whole." — Hazlitt. 

"  Edmund  Burke  possessed  and  had  sedulously  sharpened 
that  eye  which  sees  all  things,  actions,  and  events  in  relation 
to  the  laws  that  determine  their  existence  and  circumscribe 
their  possibility." — Coleridge. 

"  He  belonged  to  all  ages,  and  his  mind  was  as  catholic  as 
it  was  clear  and  vast.  .  .  .  He  had  philosophic  intellect; 

he  had  genius;     ...     he  had  heart, 
he  had  withal  a  most  comprehensive   view." — George  Gil- 
fillan. 

"  He  was  endlessly  interested  in  everything,  in  the  state  of 
the  crops,  in  the  last  play,  in  the  details  of  all  trades,  the  rhythm 
of  all  poems,  the  plots  of  all  novels,  and  indeed  in  the  course 
of  every  manufacture.  ...  He  bought  Beaconsfield, 
where  he  entertained  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  .  .  . 
Burke  was  far  too  Asiatic,  tropical,  and  splendid  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  small  economics." — Augustine  Birrell. 


314  BURKE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  My  resolutions  therefore  mean  to  establish  the  equity  and 
justice  of  a  taxation  of  America  by  grant  and  not  by  imposition  ; 
to  mark  the  legal  competency  of  the  colony  Assemblies  for  the 
support  of  their  government  in  peace  and  for  public  aids  in  time 
of  war  ;  to  acknowledge  that  this  legal  competency  has  had  a 
dutiful  and  beneficial  exercise  ;  and  that  experience  has  shown 
the  benefit  of  their  grants  and  the  futility  of  parliamentary  tax- 
ation as  a  method  of  supply." — On  Conciliation  with  America. 

"  If  there  be  one  fact  in  the  world  perfectly  clear  it  is  this  : 
'  That  the  disposition  of  the  people  of  America  is  wholly  averse 
to  any  other  than  a  free  government ; '  and  this  is  indication 
enough  to  any  honest  statesman  how  he  ought  to  adapt  whatever 
power  he  finds  in  his  hands  to  their  case.  If  any  ask  me  what  a 
free  government  is,  I  answer  that,  for  any  practical  purpose,  it 
is  what  the  people  think  so  ;  and  that  they  and  not  I  are  the  nat- 
ural, lawful,  and  competent  judges  of  this  matter." — Letter  to  the 
Sheriffs  of  Bristol. 

"  It  was  long  before  the  spirit  of  true  piety  and  true  wisdom, 
involved  in  the  principles  of  the  Reformation  could  be  depurated 
from  the  dregs  and  feculence  of  the  contention  with  which  it  was 
carried  through.  However,  until  this  be  done,  the  Reformation 
is  not  complete  ;  and  those  who  think  themselves  good  Protes- 
tants, from  their  animosity  to  others,  are  in  that  respect  no 
Protestants  at  all.  It  was  at  first  thought  necessary,  perhaps,  to 
oppose  to  Popery  another  Popery,  to  get  the  better  of  it.  What- 
ever was  the  cause,  laws  were  made  in  many  countries,  and  in 
this  kingdom  in  particular,  against  Papists,  which  are  as  bloody 
as  any  of  those  which  had  been  enacted  by  the  Popish  princes 
and  states  ;  and  where  those  laws  were  not  bloody,  in  my  opin- 
ion they  were  worse  ;  as  they  were  slow,  cruel  outrages  on  our 
nature,  and  kept  men  alive  only  to  insult  in  their  persons  every 
one  of  the  rights  and  feelings  of  humanity." — Speech  at  Bristol, 
Previous  to  the  Election. 

9.  Fondness  for  Qualification. — "In  Burke  some 
collateral  adjunct  of  the  main  proposition,  some  temperament 
or  restraint,  some  oblique  glance  at  its  remote  affinities,  will 


BURKE  315 

invariably  be  found  to  attend  the  progress  of  his  sentences. 
Burke  looks  forward,  advancing  and  changing  his  own  station 
concurrently  with  the  advance  of  his  sentences." — De  Quin- 
cey. 

"  The  admirable  combination  of  the  generalizing  faculty, 
with  a  respect  for  concrete  facts,  was  a  marked  peculiarity  of 
Burke's  mind.  His  theorizing  is  always  checked  and  verified 
by  the  text  of  specific  instances,  and  yet  in  every  special  case 
he  always  sees  a  general  principle." — Brougham. 

"  For  the  immediate  effect  of  his  eloquence,  it  might  have 
been  better  if  his  mind  had  not  been  so  Argus-eyed  to  all  the 
various  conflicting  points  of  every  case  which  he  discussed. 
.  .  .  He  was  too  careful  and  too  deep  for  his  hearers.  He 

' .     .     .     still  went  on  refining, 

And  thought  of  convincing,  while  they  thought  of  dining. '     . 

.  .  Thus  he  was  continually  looking  before  and  after 
and  on  all  sides  of  him,  and  stopping,  whenever  two  or  more 
apparently  opposite  considerations  came  in  his  way,  to  balance 
or  reconcile  them." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  His  mind  was  at  once  sublime  and  minute  ;  ...  he 
is  eager  to  embrace  the  whole  of  a  subject ;  to  place  the  mat- 
ter in  every  variety  of  light  and  to  apply  every  possible  illus- 
tration. .  .  .  He  sometimes  gives  the  first  hint  of  a  dif- 
ficulty in  order  to  show  his  skill  in  overcoming  it.  ... 
His  mind  possessed  a  peculiar  discursive  quality." — -J.  Prior. 

"  The  subtlety  of  his  mind  was  undoubtedly  what  rendered 
Burke  a  less  popular  writer  than  he  otherwise  would  have 
been.  .  .  .  [To  Burke]  the  most  important  truths  must 
be  the  most  refined  and  subtle,  and  for  that  very  reason  they 
must  comprehend  a  great  number  of  particulars,  and  instead 
of  referring  to  any  distinct  or  positive  facts,  must  point  out 
the  combined  effect  of  an  extensive  chain  of  causes,  operating 
gradually,  remotely,  and  collectively,  and  therefore  imper- 
ceptibly. " — Hazlitt. 


316  BURKE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  From  hence  they  thought  themselves  obliged  to  dispose  their 
citizens  into  such  classes,  and  to  place  them  into  such  situations 
in  the  state,  as  their  peculiar  habits  might  qualify  them  to  fill 
and  to  allot  to  them  such  appropriated  privileges  as  might  secure 
to  them  what  their  specific  occasions  required,  and  which  might 
furnish  to  each  description  such  force  as  might  protect  it  in  the 
conflict  caused  by  the  diversity  of  interests,  that  must  exist,  and 
must  contend,  in  all  complex  society  :  for  the  legislator  would 
have  been  ashamed  that  the  coarse  husbandman  should  well 
know  how  to  assort  and  to  use  his  sheep,  horses,  and  oxen,  and 
should  have  enough  of  common  sense  not  to  abstract  and  equal- 
ize them  all  into  animals,  without  providing  for  each  kind  an 
appropriate  food,  care,  and  employment  ;  whilst  he,  the  econo- 
mist, disposer,  and  shepherd  of  his  own  kindred,  subliming  him- 
self into  an  airy  metaphysician,  was  resolved  to  know  nothing  of 
his  flocks  but  as  men  in  general." — Reflections  on  the  Revolution 
in  France. 

"  Accordingly,  that  they  might  not  relax  the  nerves  of  their 
monarchy,  and  that  they  might  preserve  a  close  conformity  to 
the  practice  of  their  ancestors,  as  it  appeared  in  the  declaratory 
statutes  of  Queen  Mary  and  Queen  Elizabeth,  in  the  next  clause 
they  vest,  by  recognition,  in  their  majesties,  all  the  legal  prerog- 
atives of  the  crown,  declaring,  '  that  in  them  they  are  most  fully, 
rightfully,  and  entirely  invested,  incorporated,  united,  and  an- 
nexed.' In  the  clause  which  follows  for  preventing  questions  by 
reason  of  any  pretended  titles  to  the  crown,  they  declare  (observ- 
ing also  in  this  the  traditionary  language,  along  with  the  tra- 
ditionary policy  of  the  nation,  and  repeating  as  from  a  rubric  the 
language  of  the  preceding  acts  of  Elizabeth  and  James),  that  on 
the  preserving  '  a  certainty  in  the  succession  thereof,  the  unity, 
peace,  and  tranquillity  of  this  nation  doth,  under  God,  wholly 
depend.'  " — Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France. 

"  But  I  cannot  think  that  any  educated  man,  any  man  who 
looks  with  an  enlightened  eye  on  the  interest  of  Ireland,  can  be- 
lieve that  it  is  not  highly  for  the  advantage  of  Ireland  that  this 
Parliament,  which,  whether  right  or  wrong,  whether  we  will  or 
not,  will  make  some  laws  to  bind  Ireland,  should  always  have  in 


BURKE  317 

it  some  persons,  who  by  connection,  by  property,  or  by  early 
possessions  and  affections,  are  attached  to  the  welfare  of  that 
country.  I  am  so  clear  upon  this  point,  not  only  from  the  clear 
reason  of  the  thing,  but  from  the  constant  course  of  my  observa- 
tion by  now  having  sat  eight  sessions  in  Parliament,  that  I  de- 
clare it  to  you  as  my  sincere  opinion,  that  (if  you  must  do  either 
the  one  or  the  other)  it  would  be  wiser  by  far,  and  far  better  for 
Ireland,  that  some  new  privileges  should  attend  the  estates  of 
Irishmen,  members  of  the  two  Houses  here,  than  that  their  char- 
acter should  be  stained  by  penal  impositions,  and  their  properties 
loaded  by  unequal  and  unheard-of  modes  of  taxation." — Letter 
to  Sir  Charles  £  ing  ham. 

10.  Stern  Pathos. — "  Burke  excels  in  pathos. 
It  was  inconsistent  with  his  purpose  as  an  orator  to  draw  a 
soothing  picture  of  distress.  In  the  Warren  Hastings  trial 
he  is  said  '  to  have  made  an  affecting  appeal  to  the  feelings  of 
their  lordships,'  but  his  object  was  to  horrify  and  inflame 
them,  not  to  fill  them  with  luxurious  feelings  of  compassion 
and  melancholy.  .  .  .  The  well-known  allusion  to  Marie 
Antoinette  is  very  touching,  but  the  emotion  cannot  long 
sustain  itself  in  the  melting  mood,  but  passes  into  fiery  indig- 
nation."— Minto. 

11  [His  descriptions  of  the  desolation  wrought  by  the  wick- 
ed policy  of  Hastings]  are  full  of  genuine  pathos,  and,  while 
arousing  righteous  indignation  against  the  oppressed,  awaken 
sympathy  for  the  suffering." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

"In  his  'Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution,'  we  find 
philosophy  the  most  subtle,  invective  the  most  sublime,  spec- 
ulation   the    most   far-stretching,     .     .     .     piercing  pathos 
.     and  eloquence  the  most  dazzling  that  ever  com- 
bined depth  with  splendor." — George  Gilfillan. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  a  heart  must  I  have  to  contemplate  without  emotion 
that  elevation  and  that  fall !  Little  did  I  dream  when  she  [Marie 


318  BURKE 

Antoinette]  added  the  duties  of  veneration  to  those  of  distant, 
enthusiastic,  respectful  love,  that  she  would  ever  be  obliged  to 
carry  the  sharp  antidote  against  dishonour  concealed  in  that 
bosom.  Little  did  I  dream  that  I  should  have  lived  to  see  such 
disasters  fallen  upon  her  in  a  nation  of  gallant  men,  in  a  nation 
of  honour  and  of  cavaliers.  I  thought  ten  thousand  swords  must 
have  leaped  from  their  scabbards  to  avenge  even  a  look  that 
threatened  her  with  insult.  But  the  age  of  chivalry  is  gone. 
That  of  sophisters,  economists,  and  calculators  has  succeeded  ; 
and  the  glory  of  Europe  is  extinguished  forever.  Never,  never 
more  shall  we  behold  that  generous  loyalty  to  rank  and  sex,  that 
proud  submission,  that  dignified  obedience,  that  subordination 
of  the  heart,  which  kept  alive  the  spirit  of  exalted  freedom." — 
Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France. 

"  Then  ensued  a  scene  of  woe  the  like  of  which  no  eye  had 
seen,  no  heart  conceived,  no  tongue  can  adequately  tell.  All  the 
horrors  of  war  before  khown  or  heard  of  were  mercy  to  that  new 
havoc.  A  storm  of  universal  fire  blasted  every  field,  consumed 
every  house,  destroyed  every  temple.  The  miserable  inhabitants, 
flying  from  their  flaming  villages,  in  part  were  slaughtered ; 
others,  without  regard  to  sex,  to  age,  to  the  respect  of  rank  or 
sacredness  of  function,  fathers  torn  from  children,  husbands 
from  wives,  enveloped  in  a  whirlwind  of  cavalry  and  amidst  the 
goading  spears  of  drivers  and  the  trampling  of  pursuing  horses 
were  swept  into  captivity  in  an  unknown  and  hostile  land.  Those 
who  were  able  to  evade  -this  tempest  fled  to  the  walled  cities. 
But,  escaping  from  fire,  sword,  and  exile,  they  fell  into  the  jaws 
of  famine." — The  Nabob  of  Arcofs  Debts. 

"  I  was  entirely  out  of  the  way  of  serving  or  of  hurting  any 
statesman  or  any  party  when  the  ministers  so  generously  and  so 
nobly  carried  into  effect  the  spontaneous  bounty  of  the  crown. 
Both  descriptions  have  acted  as  became  them.  When  I  could 
no  longer  serve  them,  the  ministers  have  considered  my  sit- 
uation. When  I  could  no  longer  hurt  them,  the  revolutionists 
have  trampled  on  my  infirmity.  My  gratitude,  I  trust,  is  equal 
to  the  manner  in  which  the  benefit  was  conferred.  It  came 
to  me,  indeed,  at  a  time  of  life  and  in  a  state  of  mind  and  body 
in  which  no  circumstance  of  fortune  could  afford  me  any  real 
pleasure.  But  this  was  no  fault  in  the  royal  donor  or  in  his 


BURKE  319 

ministers,  who  were  pleased,  in  acknowledging  the  merits  of  an 
invalid  servant  of  the  public,  to  assuage  the  sorrows  of  a  desolate 
old  man." — Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord. 

II.  Vivid  Imagination. — "  He  had,  in  the  highest 
degree,  that  faculty  by  which  a  man  is  enabled  to  live  in  the 
past  and  in  the  future,  in  the  distance  and  in  the  unreal.  In- 
dia and  its  inhabitants  were  not  to  him,  as  to  most  Englishmen, 
mere  names  and  abstractions,  but  a  real  country  and  a  real 
people.  The  burning  sun,  the  strange  vegetation  of  the  palm 
and  the  cocoa  tree,  the  rice-field,  the  tank,  and  the  huge 
trees,  older  than  the  Mogul  Empire,  under  which  the  village 
crowds  assemble  ;  the  thatched  roof  of  the  peasant  hut ;  the 
rich  tracery  of  the  mosque,  where  the  imaun  prays  with  his 
face  toward  Mecca,  the  drums,  the  banners,  and  the  gaudy 
idol,  the  devotee  swinging  in  the  air,  the  graceful  maiden 
with  the  pitcher  on  her  head,  descending  the  steps  to  the 
river-side,  the  black  faces,  the  long  beards,  the  turbans  and 
the  flowing  robes,  the  spears  and  the  silver  maces,  the  ele- 
phants with  their  canopies  of  state,  the  gorgeous  palanquin  of 
the  prince  and  the  close  litter  of  the  noble  lady — all  those 
things  were  to  him  as  the  objects  amidst  which  his  own 
life  had  been  passed,  as  the  objects  which  lay  on  the  road  be- 
tween Beaconsfield  and  St.  James's  Street.  .  .  .  He  had 
just  as  lively  an  idea  of  the  insurrection  at  Benares  as  of  Lord 
George  Gordon's  riots,  and  of  the  execution  of  Nuncomar  as 
of  the  execution  of  Dr.  Dodd.  Oppression  in  Bengal  was  to 
him  the  same  thing  as  oppression  in  the  streets  of  London." 
— Mac  ait  lay. 

11  Burke's  imagination  grew  with  his  intellect,  by  which  it 
was  nourished  with  his  ever-extending  realm  of  thought. 
.  .  .  Oppression  in  Massachusetts  was  the  same  as  oppres- 
sion in  Middlesex." — G.  L.  Craik. 

"  He  had  one  of  those  fertile  and  precise  imaginations 
which  believe  that  finished  knowledge  is  an  inner  view,  which 


320  BURKE 

never  quit  a  subject  without  having  clothed  it  in  its  colors 
and  forms,  and  which,  passing  beyond  statistics  and  the  rub- 
bish of  dry  documents,  recompose  and  reconstruct  before  the 
reader's  eyes  a  distant  country  and  a  foreign  nation,  with  its 
monuments,  dresses,  landscapes,  and  all  the  shifting  detail  of 
its  aspects  and  manners.  .  .  .  His  fire  is  so  sustained,  his 
convictions  so  strong,  his  emotion  so  warm  and  abundant, 
that  we  suffer  him  to  goon,  forget  our  repugnance,  see  in  his 
inequalities  and  his  trespasses  only 'the  outpouring  of  a  great 
heart  and  a  deep  mind,  too  open  and  too  full ;  and  we  wonder 
with  a  sort  of  strange  veneration  at  this  extraordinary  over- 
flow, impetuous  as  a  torrent,  broad  as  a  sea,  in  which  the  inex- 
haustible variety  of  colors  and  forms  modulates  beneath  the 
sun  of  a  splendid  imagination,  which  lends  to  this  muddy 
surge  all  the  brilliancy  of  its  rays." — Taine. 

"  Burke's  imagination  led  him  to  look  out  all  over  the 
whole  land  :  the  legislator  devising  new  laws,  the  judge  ex- 
pounding and  enforcing  old  ones,  the  merchant  despatching 
his  goods  and  extending  his  credit, —  .  .  .  Burke  saw 
all  this  with  the  fancy  of  a  poet  and  dwelt  on  it  with  the  eye 
of  a  lover.  ...  It  was  Burke's  peculiarity  and  his  glory 
to  apply  the  imagination  of  a  poet  of  the  first  order  to  the  facts 
and  business  of  life." — Augustine  Birrcll. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Abbe  Sieves  has  whole  nests  of  pigeon-holes  full  of  constitu- 
tions ready  made,  ticketed,  sorted,  and  numbered  ;  suited  to 
every  season  and  every  fancy  ;  some  with  the  top  of  the  pattern 
at  the  bottom  and  some  with  the  bottom  at  the  top  ;  some  plain, 
some  flowered  :  some  distinguished  for  their  simplicity,  others  for 
their  complexity  ;  some  of  blood-colour  ;  some  of  bone  de  Paris  ; 
some  with  directories,  others  without  a  direction  ;  some  with 
councils  of  elders  and  councils  of  youngsters  ;  some  without  any 
council  at  all.  Some  where  the  electors  choose  the  representa- 
tives ;  others,  where  the  representatives  choose  the  electors. 
Some  in  long  coats  and  some  in  short  cloaks  ;  some  with  panta- 


BURKE  321 

loons;  some  without  breeches.  Some  with  five-shilling  qualifica- 
tions ;  some  totally  unqualified.  So  that  no  constitution-fancier 
may  go  unsuited  from  his  shop,  provided  he  loves  a  pattern  of 
pillage,  oppression,  arbitrary  imprisonment,  confiscation,  exile, 
revolutionary  judgment,  and  legalized  premeditated  murder,  in 
any  shapes  into  which  they  can  be  put." — Letter  to  a  Noble 
Lord. 

"Several  English  were  the  stupefied  and  indignant  spectators 
of  that  triumph.  It  was  (unless  we  have  been  strangely  deceived) 
a  spectacle  more  resembling  a  procession  of  American  savages 
entering  into  Onondaga  after  some  of  their  murders  called  vic- 
tories and  leading  into  hovels  hung  round  with  scalps  their  cap- 
tives, overpowered  with  the  scoffs  and  buffets  of  women  as 
ferocious  as  themselves,  much  more  than  it  resembled  the  tri- 
umphal pomp  of  a  civilized  martial  nation." — Reflections  on  the 
Revolution  in  France. 

"  On  that  day,  it  was  thought,  he  [The  Archduke  Charles  of 
Austria]  would  have  assumed  the  port  of  Mars  ;  that  he  would 
bid  to  be  brought  forth  from  their  hideous  kennel  (where  his 
scrupulous  tenderness  had  too  long  immured  them)  those  impa- 
tient dogs  of  war,  whose  fierce  regards  affright  even  the  minister 
of  vengeance  that  feeds  them  ;  that  he  would  let  them  loose,  in 
famine,  fever,  plagues,  and  death,  upon  a  guilty  race,  to  whose 
frame,  and  to  all  whose  habit  order,  peace,  religion,  and  virtue 
are  alien  and  abhorrent." — On  a  Regicide  Peace. 

12.  Rapidity.  —  While  few  of  his  critics  refer  specifi- 
cally to  this  quality  of  Burke's  style,  it  is  certainly  one  of  his 
most  prominent  characteristics,  just  as  it  is  one  of  Macaulay's. 

"In  many  of  his  vehement  passages  the  sentences  move 
with  an  abruptness  and  rapidity  resembling  the  habitual  man- 
nerism of  Macaulay." — Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  That  government  is  at  once  dreaded  and  contemned  ;  that 

the  laws  are  despoiled  of  all  their  respected  and  salutary  terrors  ; 

that  their  inaction  is  a  subject  of  ridicule  and  their  exertion  of 

abhorrence  ;  that  rank  and  office  and  title  and  all  the  solemn 

21 


322  BURKE 

plausibilities  of  the  world  have  lost  their  reverence  and  effect ; 
that  our  foreign  politics  are  as  much  deranged  as  our  domestic 
economy ;  that  our  dependencies  are  slackened  in  their  affection 
and  loosened  from  .  their  obedience  ;  that  we  know  neither  how 
to  yield  nor  how  to  enforce  ;  that  hardly  anything  above  or  below, 
abroad  or  at  home,  is  sound  and  entire  ;  but  that  disconnection 
and  confusion,  in  offices,  in  parties,  in  families,  in  Parliament, 
in  the  nation,  prevail  beyond  the  disorders  of  any  former  time  ; 
these  are  facts  universally  admitted  and  lamented." — On  the 
Present  Discontents. 

"  What  softening  of  character  is  to  be  had,  what  review  of  the 
social  situations  and  duties  is  to  be  taught,  by  these  examples  to 
kings,  to  nobles,  to  men  of  property,  to  women,  and  to  infants  ? 
The  royal  family  perished  because  it  was  royal.  The  nobles 
perished  because  they  were  noble.  The  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren who  had  property,  because  they  had  property  to  be  robbed 
of.  The  priests  were  punished  after  they  had  been  robbed  of 
their  all,  not  for  their  vices,  but  for  their  virtues  and  for  their 
piety,  which  made  them  an  honour  to  their  sacred  profession  and 
to  that  nature  of  which  we  ought  to  be  proud,  since  they  belong 
to  it." — On  a  Regicide  Peace. 

"  Well !  but  will  a  lessening  of  prodigal  expenses  and  the 
economy  which  has  been  introduced  by  the  virtuous  and  sapient 
Assembly,  make  amends  for  the  losses  sustained  in  the  receipt 
of  revenue  ?  In  this  at  least  they  have  fulfilled  the  duty  of  a 
financier.  Have  those  who  say  so,  looked  at  the  expenses  of  the 
National  Assembly  itself?  of  the  municipalities?  of  the  city  of 
Paris  ?  of  the  increased  pay  of  the  two  armies  ?  of  the  new 
police  ?  of  the  new  judicatures  ?  Have  they  even  carefully  com- 
pared the  present  pension  list  with  the  former  ?  These  politi- 
cians have  been  cruel,  not  economical." — Reflections  on  the 
Revolution  in  France, 


LAMB,  1775-1834 

Biographical  Outline. — Charles  Lamb,  born  February 
10,  1775,  in  Crown  Office  Row,  the  Temple,  London; 
father  originally  a  domestic  servant  to  a  bencher  of  the  Inner 
Temple  ;  Lamb  begins  his  school-life  under  one  William  Bird 
in  a  day-school  leading  out  of  Fetter  Lane,  which  his  sister 
Mary  also  attends;  in  1782  he  obtains  a  nomination  to 
Christ's  Hospital  (the  "  Blue  Coat  School  "),  where  he  re- 
mains for  seven  years,  and  where  he  forms  a  lasting  friendship 
with  his  fellow-pupil,  Coleridge  ;  Lamb  is  a  fair  student,  ac- 
quiring a  considerable  knowledge  of  Latin  and  obtaining  the 
rank  of  "deputy  Grecian" — next  to  the  highest  rank;  a 
serious  impediment  in  his  speech  prevents  his  obtaining  an 
"exhibition"  to  the  university,  a  favor  extended  only  to 
those  qualified  to  enter  the  Church  ;  he  leaves  Christ's  Hos- 
pital in  1789,  while  Coleridge  remains  three  years  longer,  and 
goes  thence  to  Cambridge ;  Lamb  at  first  secures  a  humble 
clerkship  in  the  South  Sea  House,  where  his  older  brother, 
John,  was  employed,  but,  early  in  1792,  he  is  appointed  to  a 
clerkship  in  the  East  India  House,  a  place  that  he  held  for 
the  next  thirty  years  ;  his  family  leave  the  Temple  on  the 
death  of  Samuel  Salt  (Lamb's  father's  employer)  in  1792, 
and  their  place  of  residence  till  1796  is  unknown  ;  in  1796 
they  lodge  in  Little  Queen  Street,  suffering  from  poverty  and 
barely  supported  by  the  salary  of  Charles  and  the  earnings  of 
Mary  as  a  seamstress;  the  elder  brother,  "John  Lamb, 
Gentleman,"  lives  comfortably  elsewhere,  and  does  not  aid 
in  the  family  support ;  Lamb's  mother  was  an  invalid,  with 
an  inclination  to  insanity;  on  September  22,  1796,  Mary 

323 


324  LAMB 

Lamb  becomes  suddenly  insane,  attempts  to  stab  a  little 
'prentice  maid,  and  fatally  stabs  her  mother,  who  had  inter- 
fered ;  at  an  inquest  Mary  is  pronounced  temporarily  insane, 
and  she  would  have  been  consigned  to  a  public  lunatic  asylum 
if  Charles  had  not  given  bonds  to  become  her  guardian  and 
to  restrain  her  from  doing  further  harm — a  most  trying  bur- 
den, which  he  bore  heroically  till  the  day  of  his  death  ;  al- 
though in  love  with  a  girl  living  in  a  cottage  near  Blakesware 
House,  Hertfordshire,  he  gives  up  all  thought  of  matrimony, 
at  his  mother's  death,  and  removes,  with  his  now  imbecile 
father  and  a  maiden  aunt,  to  45  Chapel  Street,  Pen  ton  vi  lie, 
temporarily  placing  Mary  in  a  private  sanitarium  at  Hackney  ; 
the  old  aunt  dies  in  1797  and  the  father  in  1799  ;  Lamb  be- 
gins a  life-long  correspondence  with  Coleridge  in  May,  1796, 
and  in  one  of  his  letters  he  records  the  fact  that  he  himself 
had  been  in  an  asylum  for  six  weeks  during  the  winter  of 
1795-96  because  of  some  mental  derangement ;  there  is  no 
evidence  that  he  ever  afterward  suffered  in  that  way ;  his 
mental  malady  has  been  attributed  to  his  disappointment  in 
love  affairs,  but  there  is  little  evidence  to  support  this  theory  ; 
in  the  spring  of  1796  Coleridge  publishes,  through  Cottle  of 
Bristol,  his  first  small  volume  of  poems,  and  it  includes  four 
sonnets  by  Lamb,  this  being  his  first  appearance  in  print  ;  in 
1797  the  second  edition  of  Coleridge's  poems  includes 
"poems  by  Charles  Lamb  and  Charles  Lloyd;"  in  the 
summer  of  1797  Lamb  visits  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey, 
where  he  meets  Wordsworth  and  others ;  in  1798  appears  a 
small  volume  of  verse  by  Lamb  and  Lloyd  and  Lamb's  prose 
romance,  "  A  Tale  of  Rosamund  Gray  and  Old  Blind  Mar- 
garet; "  our  earliest  portrait  of  Lamb  is  made,  through  Cottle's 
agency,  in  1798  ;  late  in  that  year  he  begins  his  correspond- 
ence with  Southey,  in  which  he  first  manifests  his  peculiar 
humor  and  quaintness  ;  on  the  death  of  Lamb's  father,  in  the 
spring  of  1799,  Mary  returns  to  live  with  her  brother  at 
Pentonville,  but  rumors  of  her  insane  violence  soon  compel 


LAMB  325 

them  to  give  up  their  lodgings  ;  during  the  next  nine  months 
they  lodge  at  Southampton  Buildings,  Holborn,  but  are  again 
driven  out  because  of  the  rumors  of  Mary's  insanity  ;  they 
then  take  lodgings  in  King's  Bench  Walk,  in  the  Temple, 
where  they  remain  for  nine  years,  removing  thence  to  lodg- 
ings in  Inner  Temple  Lane  for  another  nine  years  ;  late  in 
1799  Lamb  begins  his  correspondence  with  Thomas  Man- 
ning, a  Cambridge  mathematician  and  orientalist,  whom 
Lamb  had  met  while  visiting  Lloyd  at  Cambridge;  about 
this  time  Lamb  also  begins  to  write  for  the  newspapers  ;  dur- 
ing the  next  three  years  he,  contributes  paragraphs  and  epi- 
grams to  the  Morning  Post,  the  Morning  Chronicle,  and  the 
Albion;  in  1802  he  publishes  "John  Woodvil,"  a  play  in 
blank  verse,  showing  throughout  the  influence  of  the  early 
Elizabethan  dramatists,  whom  Lamb  dearly  loved  and  studied, 
and  whose  style  he  purposely  imitated  in  his  play  ;  the  play 
is  ignorantly  and  unfavorably  reviewed  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  for  April,  1803  ;  meantime  Lamb  and  his  sister  are, 
as  she  writes,  "  very  poor  ; "  late  in  1805  he  writes  his  farce 
••  Mr.  H.  ;  "  it  is  produced  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  Decem- 
ber 10,  1805,  and  is,  as  he  says,  "  incontinently  damned;  " 
during  1805  he  meets  Hazlitt  and,  through  him,  Godwin,  who 
was  then  publishing  books  for  children  ;  for  Godwin  Charles 
and  Mary  write  "Tales  from  Shakespeare,"  which  is  pub- 
lished in  1807  and  reaches  a  second  edition  in  the  following 
year  ;  the  "  Tales  "  first  brought  Lamb  into  notice  as  a  writer; 
in  1808  he  publishes  a  child's  version  of  the  adventures  of 
Ulysses,  based  on  Chapman's  "  Odyssey;  "  in  1808  he  also 
publishes,  through  the  Longmans,  selections  from  the  early 
English  dramatists,  under  the  title  "Poets  Contemporary 
with  Shakespeare;"  he  is  at  once  recognized  by  literary 
men  as  a  critic  of  the  highest  order  and  a  great  prose  writer  ; 
in  1811  he  publishes  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Reflector  his  essay  on 
Hogarth  and  that  on  the  tragedies  of  Shakespeare;  in  1813 
he  publishes  "Recollections  of  Christ's  Hospital"  in  the 


326  LAMB 

Gentleman's  Magazine  and,  in  1814,  his  "Confessions  of  a 
Drunkard  "  in  his  friend  Montagu's  book,  "  Some  Enquiries 
into  the  Effects  of  Fermented  Liquors;  "  between  1808  and 
1818  Lamb  forms  friendships  with  Procter,  Talfourd,  Crabbe, 
Haydon,  and  others,  and  is  frequently  embarrassed  by  the  ex- 
penditures incident  to  the  entertainment  of  numerous  visitors  ; 
in  the  autumn  of  1817  the  Lambs  remove  to  lodgings  in 
Great  Russell  Street,  Covent  Garden  ;  in  1818  Charles  pub- 
lishes a  collection  of  his  miscellaneous  writings,  both  prose 
and  verse,  including  "John  Woodvil "  and  "Rosamund 
Gray,"  dedicating  the  two  volumes  to  Coleridge;  early  in 
1820  he  is  presented  by  Hazlitt  to  the  editor  of  the  newly 
established  London  Magazine,  and  agrees  to  contribute  occa- 
sional essays;  in  August,  1820,  he  contributes  "  Recollections 
of  the  South  Sea  House,"  to  which  he  first  appends  his  pseu- 
donyme  "  Elia  "  (at  first  spelled  Ellia),  appropriating  the 
name  of  a  long-forgotten  old  clerk  in  the  South  Sea  House  ; 
between  August,  1820,  and  December,  1822,  he  contributes 
to  the  London  Magazine  twenty-five  essays  signed  "Elia;" 
these  were  reprinted  in  a  single  volume  in  1823  ;  after  the 
death  of  his  brother  in  1821,  Lamb  writes  "  Dream  Chil- 
dren ;  "  in  1822  the  Lambs  make  a  brief  tour  in  France,  vis- 
iting Charles's  friend,  James  Kenney,  a  dramatist,  at  Versailles; 
while  abroad  Mary  suffers  from  one  of  her  then  more  fre- 
quently recurring  fits  of  insanity  ;  early  in  1823  Southey 
publishes  a  severe  criticism  of  Lamb's  "  Essays  of  Elia,"  de- 
claring that  the  essays,  as  a  whole,  lack  sound  religious  feel- 
ing ;  Lamb,  deeply  hurt,  replies  in  "A  Letter  of  Elia  to 
Robert  Southey,  Esq.,"  published  in  the  London  Magazine 
for  October,  1823  ;  Southey  replies  in  a  generous  letter  of 
explanation,  and  their  friendship  is  renewed  ;  while  visiting 
at  Cambridge,  in  1823,  the  Lambs  meet  Ernma  Isola,  daugh- 
ter of  one  of  the  esquire  bedells  of  the  university  ;  Emma 
afterward  often  visits  them  in  London,  and  is  eventually 
adopted  by  them ;  she  becomes  a  great  comfort  to  both 


LAMB  327 

Charles  and  Mary,  by  whom  she  is  educated,  and  remains 
with  them  till  her  marriage  to  Moxon,the  publisher,  in  1833  ; 
in  August,  1823,  the  Lambs  remove  from  Great  Russell  Street 
to  a  cottage  in  Colebrooke  Row,  Islington,  where  the  New 
River  runs  at  the  foot  of  the  garden ;  about  this  time  Lamb 
becomes  attached  to  Bernard  Barton,  the  Quaker  Poet,  to 
whom  many  of  his  best  letters  are  addressed  ;  after  a  severe 
illness  in  the  winter  of  1824-25,  by  the  advice  of  his  phy- 
sicians he  applies  to  the  directors  of  the  East  India  House 
for  retirement  with  a  pension ;  his  request  is  granted  in 
March,  1825,  his  pension  amounting  to  three-fourths  of  his 
salary  at  the  time,  less  a  slight  deduction,  to  insure  an  allow- 
ance to  Mary  in  case  she  should  survive  her  brother ;  the 
amount  available  for  Lamb  was  ^441  a  year;  the  Lambs 
make  frequent  visits  to  Hertfordshire,  where  they  eventually 
take  the  little  house  known  as  "The  Chace,"  at  Enfield; 
Lamb  seeks  relief  from  the  tedium  of  having  nothing  to  do 
in  long  walks  about  the  country;  in  1826  he  contributes  to 
the  Monthly  Magazine  his  papers  on  ' '  Popular  Fallacies  ;  ' ' 
in  1828  he  writes  his  verses  "On  An  Infant  Dying  as  Soon 
as  Born  "  (the  child  of  his  friend  Thomas  Hood),  and  makes 
extracts  from  the  Garrick  plays  in  the  British  Museum  for 
the  "  Table  Book"  of  his  friend  Hone;  in  1830  he  makes  a 
collection  of  his  acrostics,  album-verses,  etc.,  and  publishes 
them  through  his  friend  Moxon  under  the  title  "  Album 
Verses;  "  in  1829  Mary's  increasing  fits  of  insanity  compel 
them  to  give  up  housekeeping,  and  they  take  lodgings  in  En- 
field,  near  "  The  Chace,"  with  a  family  named  Westwood ; 
Mary  improves,  but  Charles  grows  restless  to  return  to  town 
life  ;  in  1833  they  remove  to  Edmonton,  the  parish  adjoining 
Enfield,  where  they  take  lodgings  at  Bay  Cottage  with  the 
Waldens,  who  had  cared  for  Mary  during  her  previous  at- 
tacks ;  here  the  Lambs  pass  the  last  two  years  of  their  united 
lives;  in  1833  Moxon  marries  Emma  Isola,  and  publishes 
"  The  Last  Essays  of  Elia,"  drawn  mainly  from  the  London 


328  LAMB 

Magazine  ;  Lamb  is  greatly  depressed  by  Coleridge's  death  in 
July,  1834  ;  he  dies  at  Edmonton  December  27,  1834,  and 
is  buried  there  ;  he  leaves  to  his  sister  his  accumulated  sav- 
ings of  £2,000;  she  survives  him  till  May  20,  1847;  at 
times  he  sought  refuge  from  his  great  sorrow,  and  from  the 
embarrassment  due  to  his  stammering,  in  the  use  of  wine ; 
owing  to  his  predisposition  to  insanity  a  very  little  alcohol 
affected  him,  but  those  who  knew  him  best  declare  that  he 
was  never  thus  incapacitated  for  the  performance  of  either  his 
official  or  his  domestic  duties. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON  LAMB'S  STYLE. 
Hazlitt,  W.,  "Spirit  of  the   Age."     London,    1886,   G.   Bell  &  Sons, 

333-343- 

Pater,  W.,  "Appreciations."     New  York,  1890,  Macmillan,  107-126. 
Gilfillan,   G.,    "Literary    Portraits."     Edinburgh,    1851,  J.    Hogg,    i: 

230-234. 
Oliphant,    Mrs.,    "Literary   History  of    England."     New  York,  1889, 

Macmillan,  2  :   1-18. 
De  Quincey,  T.,  "Works."     Edinburgh,  1890,  A.  &  C.  Black,  5  :  215- 

259- 
Reed,  H.,  "British  Poets."     Philadelphia,  1857,  Parry  &  McWilliams, 

2:    127-132. 
Bulwer-Lytton,   E.,   "Miscellaneous  Prose  Works."     New  York,  1868, 

Harper,  1 :  89-122. 
Stoddard,   R.   H.,    "Personal  Recollections."     New  York,  1875,  Scrib- 

ner,  1-47. 

Procter,  B.  W.,  "Charles  Lamb."     London,  1869,  E.  Moxon. 
Ainger,  A.,    "English   Men    of  Letters."     New  York,    1882,    Harper, 

100-121,  etc. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Res  Judicatce. "     New  York,  1892,  Scribner,  232-252. 
Pebody,  C.,  "  Authors  at  Work. "     London,  1872,  Allen  &  Co.,  114-146. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "  Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  2  :   298-299. 
Dawson,   G.,    "Biographical  Lectures."     London,   1887,    Kegan   Paul, 

Trench  &Co.,  235-251. 
Allibone,  S.  A.,  "  Dictionary  of  Authors. "     Philadelphia,  1870,  Lippin- 

cott,  2  :    1048. 
Ainger,  A.,  "Essays  of  Elia."     New  York,  International  Book  Co.,  I  : 

1-16. 


LAMB  329 

Ireland,  Alex.,  "William  Hazlitt."     New  York,  1889,  Warne,  300-306 

and  471-474. 
Shaw,  T.  B.,    "  A  Manual   of  English   Literature."     New  York,    1881, 

Sheldon,  347~348- 
Minto,  \V.,  "English  Prose  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackstone, 

537-539- 
Robertson,   J.  M.,  "An   Essay  Toward  a  Critical  Method. "     London, 

1889,  Unwin,  v.  index. 
Ward,  T.  H.,  "English  Poets"  (Dowden).     New  York,  Macmillan,  4: 

326-333- 

Russell,  W.  C.,  "Book  of  Authors."     London,  n.  d.,  Warne,  399-402. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  365-368. 

Hall,  S.  C.,  "  Book  of  Memoirs."     London,  1871,  Virtue,  51-61. 
Hall,  S.  C.,  "  Retrospect  of  a  Long  Life."     New  York,  1883,  Appleton, 

316-317- 
Ainger,  A.,   "Letters  of  Charles  Lamb."     London,    1888,    Macmillan, 

two  volumes,  v,  index. 

Moir,  D.  M.,  "  Sketches  of  Poetical  Literature."  London,  1872,  Black- 
wood,  89-90. 

Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1893, 
Harper,  2  :  243  and  v.  index. 

Morley  and  Tyler,  "  A  Manual  of  English  Literature."  New  York, 
1882,  Sheldon,  636. 

Hazlitt,  William,  "Table  Talk."  London,  1882,  G.  Bell  &  Sons,  v. 
index. 

Craik,  G.  L., "  History  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1864,  Scrib- 
ner,  2  :  483-484. 

Swinburne,  A.  C.,  "William  Blake  "     London,  1868,  C.  Holten,  8. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1875,  Holt, 
3:  68-71. 

Talfourd,  T.  N.,  "Final  Memorials  of  Charles  Lamb."  New  York, 
1849,  Appleton,  v.  index. 

Talfourd,  T.  N.,"  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Lamb. "  London,  1886,  Bell. 

Talfourd,  T.  N.,  "Memoirs  of  Charles  Lamb."  Philadelphia,  1892, 
Lippincott. 

Hood,  Thomas,  "Works."     New  York,  1864,  Putnam,  6:   396. 

Fitzgerald,  P.,  "  Memoir  of  Charles  Lamb."  London,  1866,  R.  Bent- 
ley,  v.  index. 

Martin,  B.  E  ,  "  In  the  Footprints  of  Charles  Lamb."  New  York,  1890, 
Scribner,  1-146. 

Lamb,  C.,  "  Letters."     New  York,  1888,  Armstrong. 


33O  LAMB 

Stephen,   L.,   "Dictionary  of  National   Biography."     New  York,  1890, 

Macmillan,  31  :  423-429. 

Wotton,  M.  E.,  "Word  Portraits."     London,  1887,  Bentley,    168-171. 
Paul,  C.  K.,  "William  Godwin."     London,  1876,  King  &  Co.,  I  :  362 

and  2  :   3. 
Hutton,    L. ,    "  Literary   Landmarks  of    London."     New    York,    1892, 

Harper,  182-192. 
Pym,    H.    N.,    "Memoirs  of  Old   Friends."     London,    1882,    Smith, 

Elder   &  Co.,  I  :   23. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  "  Life  of  Carlyle."     London,  1882,  Longmans,  Green  & 

Co.,  l:   222  and  2  :   209-210.  , 

Quarterly  Review,  122:    17-20;   54:   58-77. 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  66:  133-150;  3:  598-610;    108:  285-301. 
North  American  Review,  104 :  418-428  (A.  S.  Hill) ;  46 :  55-71  (C.  C. 

Felton). 

Eclectic  Magazine,  23:  491-496;   31:  399-405;    15:  67-77. 
Methodist  Quarterly  Review,  18 :   566-577  (W.  H.  Barnes);   47:   382- 

397  (Wise). 

The  Dial  (Chicago),  9:    38-39  (E.  G.  Johnson);  4:    no. 
Harpers'  Magazine,  20:    88-97  (G.  W.   Curtis);    54:  916-917  (G.  W. 

Curtis)  ;  55 :  464-465  (G.  W.  Curtis) ;    I  :   272-274  (L.  Hunt). 
Edinburgh  Review,  124:    133-140  (Procter);  66:    1-20  (Talfourd) ;   2: 

90-96. 

British  Quarterly,  45  :  335-356 ;  8 :  381-395. 
Christian  Examiner,  69:  415-434  (T.  B.  Fox). 
Fortnightly  Review,  30  :  466-474  (W.  H.  Pater). 
Nineteenth  Century,  17:   66-91  (Swinburne). 
Westminster  Review,  126:    16-28  (Talfourd). 
Xorth  British  Review,  10  :    179-214  (Talfourd). 

Atlantic  Monthly,    n  :    529-5450.    E.  Babson) ;    12:    401-417  (Bab- 
son);    14:   478-491   (Babson);     14:    552-563  (Babson)  ;   27:   745- 

757  (Babson). 

The  Academy,  21  :   168  (R.  C.  Brown);  33:   265-266  (R.  C.  Brown). 
Temple  Bar,  85:   33-51;  86:  237-257  (Roose). 
Gentleman's  Magazine  (New  Series),  41  :   55-63  (Summers)  ;  6 :   285- 

298  (Pebody) ;  19:  113-122  (Shepherd). 
Dublin  University  Magazine,  79:  149-168. 
American  Quarterly  Review,  19  :  185-206  (Tuckerman)  ;  22  :  473-483 

(Talfourd). 

Historical  Magazine,  9  :  45-49. 
The  Athemnim,  1886  (2):   468  (Ainger) ;    1835  (l):    70-73  and  107-110 

(Procter). 


LAMB  331 

The  New  Englander,  44:    605  (\V.  W.  \Yells). 

Frascrs  Magazine,  105:  607-617  (J.   Dennis). 

Chambers' 's  Journal,  43  :    763-766. 

Macmillan's  Magazine,  15:  473-483;  55  :   161-173  (Ainger)  ;    54:    276- 

279  (Birrell). 

London  Society,  42:    182-194. 
Christian  Remembrancer,  16  :   424-458. 
Contemporary  Kez'iew,  45  :  642-665  (R.  H.  Hutton). 
Spectator,  65  :   205-207. 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Quaintness— Fondness  for  the  Antique.— Lamb 
has  been  justly  called  "an  old  writer,  who  lived  a  century  or 
two  after  his  time."  He  was  a  constant  reader  and  a  great 
admirer  of  the  old  English  writers,  such  as  Browne,  Fuller, 
Taylor,  and  the  like,  and  he  succeeded  in  reviving  the  spirit 
of  these  authors  in  his  own  works.  Taine  says  that  "  he  re- 
stored the  sixteenth  century."  He  introduced  the  reading 
public  of  his  day  to  the  merits  and  beauties  of  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists,  and  it  is  said  that  his  tragedy  "John  Woodvil " 
bears  all  the  marks  of  having  been  written  two  hundred  years 
before.  His  biographer,  Talfourd,  calls  this  quality  "  that 
quaint  sweetness,  that  peculiar  union  of  kindness  and  whim." 
When  Lamb  was  but  twenty-one  he  wrote  to  Coleridge:  "  I 
wish  you  would  try  and  do  something  to  bring  our  elder  bards 
into  more  general  fame.  I  writhe  with  indignation  when,  in 
books  of  criticism,  I  find  no  mention  of  such  men  as  Mas- 
singer  or  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  men  with  whom  succeeding 
dramatic  writers  can  bear  no  manner  of  comparison  ;  "  and 
again,  "I  hate  all  that  do  read,  for  they  read  nothing  but 
reviews  and  new  books.  I  gather  myself  up  into  the  old 
things."  This  trait  in  Lamb's  style  and  character  seems  in 
part  due  to  the  influence  of  "  the  old  and  awful  cloisters  "  of 
the  school  where  he  spent  his  most  impressionable  years. 
Barry  Cornwall  calls  him  "  the  last  true  lover  of  antiquity." 
He  has  a  distaste  for  new  faces,  new  books,  new  buildings, 


332  LAMB 

and  new  customs.  He  says  of  himself  that  he  loves  "  out-of- 
the-way  humors  and  opinions — heads  with  some  diverting 
twist  in  them."  He  tells  us  also  that  he  and  his  sister  were 
tumbled  early,  by  accident  or  design,  into  a  spacious  closet  of 
good  Old  English  reading,  without  much  objection  or  pro- 
hibition, and  browsed  at  will  upon  that  fair  and  wholesome 
pasturage.  The  result  of  all  this  appears  in  the  "picturesque 
quaintness  "  of  his  words,  constructions,  and  themes.  "  He 
diverges  into  green  lanes  and  sunshiny  glades,  and  not  seldom 
into  the  darker  and  more  holy  places  of  undiscovered  solitude. ' ' 
"  Crude  they  are,  I  grant  you,"  says  Lamb  of  his  own  writ- 
ings; "  a  sort  of  unlicked,  incondite  things,  villainously  planked 
out  in  an  affected  array  of  antique  modes  and  phrases. ' ' 

"Mr.  Lamb  has  raked  among  the  dust  and  cobwebs  of  a 
remote  period  ;  has  exhibited  specimens  of  curious  relics,  and 
poured  over  moth-eaten,  decayed  manuscripts  for  the  benefit 
of  the  more  inquisitive  and  discerning  part  of  the  public. 
.  He  prefers  by-ways  to  highways.  .  .  .  The 
film  of  the  past  hovers  forever  before  him.  He  evades  the 
present,  he  mocks  the  future.  ...  His  style  is  often 
conveyed  through  old-fashioned  conduit-pipes ;  but,  never- 
theless, runs  pure  and  clear." — Hazlitt. 

"  He  was  the  quaintest  of  humourists.  .  .  .  In  his  search 
of  matter  for  genius,  he  went  into  the  oddest  and  most  out-of- 
the-way  corners.  .  .  .His  style  is  so  antique  yet  racy, 
imitative  yet  original.  .  .  -  His  letters  are  all  so  deli- 
ciously  fresh  and  rich,  so  peppered  with  old  world  condiments, 
so  brimful  of  the  sparkling  '  wine  of  life,'  so  tartly  singular  in 
their  spirit  and  style." — George  Gilfillan. 

"  From  the  olden  time  of  authorship 
Thy  patent  should  be  dated, 
And  thou  with  Marvell,  Browne, 
And  Burton  mated." 

— Bernard  Barton. 


LAMB  333 

"  Even  in  what  he  says  casually,  there  comes  an  aroma  of 
old  English.  .  .  .  He  continually  overawes  one  with 
touches  of  a  strange  utterance  from  worlds  afar." — Walter 

Pater. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Above  all  thy  rarities,  old  Oxenford,  what  do  mostarride  and 
solace  me  are  thy  repositories  of  mouldering  learning.  .  .  . 
What  a  place  to  be  in  is  an  old  library !  It  seems  as  though  all 
the  souls  of  all  the  writers  that  have  bequeathed  their  labours  to 
these  Bodleians  were  reposing  here,  as  in  some  dormitory  or 
middle  state.  I  do  not  want  to  handle,  to  profane  the  leaves, 
their  winding-sheets.  I  could  as  soon  dislodge  a  shade.  I  seem 
to  inhale  learning,  walking  amid  their  foliage  ;  and  the  odor  of 
their  old  moth-scented  coverings  is  fragrant  as  the  first  bloom  of 
those  sciential  apples  which  grew  amid  the  happy  orchard." — 
Oxford  in  Vacation. 

"  Situated  as  thou  art,  in  the  very  heart  of  living  and  stirring 
commerce — amid  the  fret  and  fever  of  speculation — with  the  Bank 
and  the  '  Change '  and  the  India-house  about  thee,  in  the  hey- 
day of  present  prosperity,  with  their  important  faces,  as  it  were, 
insulting  thee,  their  poor  neighbour  out  of  business — to  the  idle 
and  merely  contemplative— to  such  as  me,  old  house,  there  is  a 
charm  in  thy  quiet — a  cessation — a  coolness  from  business — an  in- 
dolence almost  cloistral — which  is  delightful !  With  what  rever- 
ence have  I  paced  thy  great  bare  rooms  and  courts  at  even-tide  ! 
They  spoke  of  the  past — the  shade  of  some  dead  accountant,  with 
visionary  pen  in  ear,  would  flit  by  me,  stiff  as  in  life.  Living  ac- 
counts and  accountants  puzzle  me.  I  have  no  skill  in  figuring. 
But  thy  great  dead  tomes,  which  scarce  three  degenerate  clerks 
of  the  present  day  could  lift  from  their  enshrining  shelves — with 
their  old  fantastic  flourishes  and  decorative  rubric  interlacings 
— their  sums  in  triple  columniations,  set  down  with  formal  super- 
fluity of  ciphers — with  pious  sentences  at  the  beginning,  without 
which  our  religious  ancestors  never  ventured  to  open  a  book  of 
business  or  bill  of  lading— the  costly  vellum  covers  of  some  of 
them  almost  persuading  us  that  we  are  got  into  some  better 
library — are  very  agreeable  and  edifying  spectacles." — The 
South-Sea  House. 

"Antiquity!  thou  wondrous  charm,  what  art  thou  that,  being 


334  LAMB 

nothing,  art  everything  !  When  thou  wert  thou  wert  not  antiquity 
— then  thou  wert  nothing,  but  hadst  a  remoter  antiquity,  as  thou 
calledst  it,  to  look  back  to  with  blind  veneration  ;  thou  thyself 
being  to  thyself  flat,  jejeune,  modern  ;  what  mystery  lurks  in  this 
retroversion  ?  or  what  half  Januses  are  we,  that  cannot  look  for- 
ward with  the  same  idolatry  with  which  we  forever  revert !  The 
mighty  future  is  as  nothing,  being  everything  !  the  past  is  every- 
thing, being  nothing !  What  were  thy  dark  ages  ?  Surely  the 
sun  rose  as  brightly  then  as  now  !  " — Oxford  in  Vacation. 

2.  Tenderness— Sympathy    with    Humanity.— In 

one  of  his  letters,  Lamb  says :  "  I  myself  prefer  the  affections 
to  the  sciences."  The  expression  is  most  characteristic  of  the 
man  and  of  his  style.  With  Goldsmith  (possibly)  excepted,  he 
is  the  most  gentle  and  lovable  of  our  great  essayists.  Patmore, 
his  intimate  friend,  says  that  it  was  impossible  for  Lamb  to 
hate  a  human  being.  De  Quincey,  another  friend,  says  that 
Lamb's  temper  was  "angelically  benign,  but  also,  in  a  mor- 
bid degree,  melancholy."  In  his  writings,  as  in  his  life,  he 
displayed  the  most  delicate  regard  for  the  feelings  of  others, 
no  matter  how  humble  or  how  debased.  It  is  said  that  he 
would  give  the  right  of  way  to  a  beggar  on  the  street.  The 
husband  of  a  poor  woman  of  Lamb's  acquaintance  is  ar- 
rested for  sheep-stealing,  and  Lamb  urges  his  sister  to  call  at 
once  on  the  unfortunate  woman,  lest  she  may  think  their 
coldness  due  to  the  disgrace  of  her  husband.  "  I  have  a  ten- 
derness for  a  sheep-stealer,"  is  Lamb's  quizzical  explanation 
to  a  correspondent.  Talfourd  justly  says,  that  of  all  modern 
writers,  Lamb's  works  "  are  most  immediately  directed  to 
give  us  heart's-ease  and  make  us  happy."  Says  Hazlitt :  "He 
yearns  after  and  covets  that  which  soothes  the  frailty  of  human 
nature."  T.  W.  Hunt  puts  the  case  finely  when  he  says  that 
Lamb  "  has  a  large  element  of  the  Melanchthon  in  his  style, 
and  little  of  the  Luther."  "Thoroughly  to  understand  and  en- 
joy Lamb,"  says  Ainger,  "  one  must  have  come  to  entertain  a 
feeling  toward  him  almost  like  personal  affection."  Lamb's 


LAMB  335 

tenderness  often  takes  the  form  of  the  finest  pathos — "smil- 
ing pathos,"  De  Quincey  calls  it.  "  His  heart,"  says  Cole- 
ridge, "  is  as  whole  as  his  head." 

"And  I  thought  how  natural  it  was  for  Charles  Lamb  to 
give  a  kiss  to  an  old  folio,  as  I  once  saw  him  do  to  Chap- 
man's '  Homer.'  " — Leigh  Hunt. 

"  He  could  not,  or  would  not,  see  ugliness  anywhere — ex- 
cept as  a  sort  of  beauty-spot  upon  the  face  of  beauty ;  but 
beauty  he  could  see  everywhere,  and  nowhere  shining  so 
brightly  as  when  in  connection  with  what  others  call  ugli- 
ness. .  .  .  He  loved  those  best  whom  everyone  else 
hated."—  R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"He  reasoned  with  his  heart — with  his  heart  he  loved  ;  in 
his  heart  he  lived,  moved,  and  had  his  being.  And  what  a 
strange,  wild,  hot,  large  heart  Lamb's  was  !  It  was  only  less 
than  that  which  lies  in  Dumfries  kirk-yard,  belonging  to  the 
man  of  whom  it  was  said  that  if  you  touched  his  hand  it  would 
have  burnt  yours.  This  heart  taught  Lamb  to  love  the  out- 
casts of  society,  to  associate  with  the  excommunicates,  to  cry 
halves  to  every  pelt  of  calumny  which  assailed  their  devoted 
heads. ' ' — George  Gilfillan. 

"His  simple  mother-pity  to  those  who  suffer  by  accident 
or  by  unkindness  of  nature  has  something  primitive  in  its 
largeness.  .  .  .  Little  arts  of  happiness  he  is  ready  to 
teach  to  others." — Walter  Pater. 

"  His  heart  opened  wide  to  real  distress.  .  .  .  The 
large-minded  human  being  .  .  .  Charles  Lamb !  who 
sympathized  with  all  classes  and  conditions  of  men — as  readily 
with  the  sufferings  of  the  tattered  beggar  and  the  poor  chim- 
ney-sweeper's boy  as  with  the  starry  contemplations  of  Ham- 
let '  The  Dane,'  or  the  eagle- flighted  madness  of  Lear. 
.  .  The  fact  that  distinguished  Charles  Lamb  from  other 
men  was  his  entire  devotion  to  one  grand  and  tender  purpose. 
He  pitied  all  objects  which  had  been  neglected  or 
despised."—^.  W.  Procter, 


336  LAMB 

"  There  was  nothing  too  great  for  him  to  grasp,  nothing 
too  little  for  him  to  love." — George  Dawson. 

"  With  what  a  noble,  independent,  manly  mind  did  he 
love  his  friends !  His  masculine  nature  and  absolute  freedom 
from  that  curse  of  literature,  coterieship,  stand  revealed  on 
every  page  of  the  history  of  Lamb's  friendships." — Augustine 
Birrell. 

"  No  face  can  frown,  no  brow  be  overcast,  when  Elia — the 
gentle,  the  tender,  the  humorous  and  ever-smiling,  notwith- 
standing the  deep  dew  of  anguish  which  was  never  quite  dried 
in  his  eyes — makes  his  appearance  upon  the  scene. 
Elia,  the  whimsical,  the  tender,  whose  every  tear  suggests  a 
smile,  and  every  smile  a  tear." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Shut  not  thy  purse-strings  always  against  painted  distress. 
Act  a  charity  sometimes.  When  a  poor  creature  (outwardly  and 
visibly  such)  comes  before  thee,  do  not  stay  to  inquire  whether 
the  seven  small  children,  in  whose  name  he  implores  thy  assist- 
ance, have  a  veritable  existence.  Rake  not  into  the  bowels  of 
unwelcome  truth  to  save  a  half-penny.  It  is  good  to  believe 
him.  If  he  be  not  all  that  he  pretendeth,  give,  and  under 
a  personate  father  of  a  family,  think  (if  thou  pleasest)  that 
thou  hast  relieved  an  indigent  bachelor.  When  they  come 
with  their  counterfeit  looks  and  mumping  tones,  think  them 
players.  You  pay  your  money  to  see  a  comedian  feign  these 
things,  which,  concerning  these  poor  people,  thou  canst  not 
certainly  tell  whether  they  are  feigned  or  not." — The  Decay  of 
Beggars. 

"  I  like  to  meet  a  sweep— understand  me — not  a  grown  sweep- 
er— but  one  of  those  tender  novices — such  as  come  forth  with  the 
dawn,  or  somewhat  earlier,  with  their  little  professional  notes 
sounding  like  the  peep  peep  of  a  young  sparrow.  .  .  .  I  have 
a  kindly  yearning  toward  these  dim  specks — poor  blots — inno- 
cent blacknesses.  .  .  .  Reader,  if  thou  meetest  one  of  these 
small  gentry  in  thy  early  rambles,  it  is  good  to  give  him  a  penny. 


LAMB  337 

It  is  better  to  give  him  two-pence.  If  it  be  starving  weather,  and 
to  the  proper  troubles  of  his  hard  occupation  a  pair  of  kibed 
heels  be  added,  the  demand  on  thy  humanity  will  surely  rise  to  a 
tester." —  The  Praise  of  Chimney  Sweepers. 


3.  Graceful  Ease — Companionability. — In  a  purely 
literary  sense,  the  most  prominent  feature  of  Lamb's  style  is 
what  Shaw  calls  "  an  unimaginable  happiness  of  expression." 
Says  Ainger,  "  There  is  an  epithet  commonly  applied  to 
Lamb  so  hackneyed  that  one  shrinks  from  using  it  once  more 
— the  epithet  delightful.  No  other  word  certainly  seems 
more  appropriate,  and  it  is  perhaps  because  (in  defiance  of 
etymology)  the  sound  of  it  suggests  that  double  virtue  of  il- 
luminating and  making  happy.  It  is  in  vain  to  attempt  to 
convey  an  idea  of  the  impression  left  by  Lamb's  style.  It 
evades  analysis.  One  might  as  well  seek  to  account  for  the 
perfume  of  lavender  or  the  flavour  of  quince.  .  .  .  If  he 
had  by  nature  the  delicate  grace  of  Marvell  and  the  quaint 
fancy  of  Quarles,  he  had  also  the  chivalry  of  Sidney."  De 
Quincey  calls  him  "  the  exquisite  Elia,"  abounding  in  "  shy 
graces  lurking  half  unseen,  like  violets  in  the  shade  ;  a  bril- 
liant star  forever  fixed  in  the  firmament  of  English  literature," 
and  pronounces  the  essays  of  Elia  "  as  exquisite  a  gem  amongst 
the  jewelry  of  literature  as  any  nation  can  show. "  There  is 
a  racy,  colloquial,  home-like  quality  about  Lamb's  prose  that 
gives  it  a  lasting  charm.  He  is  "sympathetic  rather  than 
scholastic."  He  purposely  wrote  in  a  conversational  style. 
"  He  labored,"  says  Taine,  "  to  destroy  the  grand  aristocrat  - 
ical  and  oratorical  style  and  to  replace  studied  phrases  and  a 
lofty  vocabulary  by  natural  tones  and  plebeian  words."  As 
Hood  expresses  it,  "  Lamb,  whilst  he  willingly  lent  a  crutch 
to  halting  Humility,  took  delight  in  tripping  up  the  stilts  of 
Pretension."  In  a  word,  as  a  critic  puts  it  in  the  Quarterly 
Review,  "  Lamb  is  one  of  those  favorites  of  the  Graces  on 
whom  the  gift  of  charm  is  bestowed." 

22 


338  LAMB 

"  Never  was  there  more  delightful  playing  with  life  and  all 
its  mysteries  and  depths,  more  soft  and  laughing  banter,  more 
tender  thoughtfulness.  .  .  .  When  he  rises  into  the  fun 
of  the  roast  pig,  or  expatiates  with  humorous  tenderness  upon 
the  'innocent  blacknesses,'  the  poor  little  sweeps  for  whose 
hard  lot  no  alleviation  of  machinery  in  the  shape  of  long- 
jointed  brushes  had  yet  been  thought  of,  or  falls  into  the 
vein  of  delicate  sentiment  in  which  he  discourses  with  his 
'dream  children,'  there  is  no  more  delightful  companion. 
No  true  reader,  wherever  found,  can  fail  to  ac- 
knowledge the  power  of  Elia.  He  is,  in  the  best  sense  of  the 
word,  one  who  writes  for  writing's  sake,  not  because  he  has 
much  to  tell  us,  but  because  it  is  a  pleasure  to  him  to  make 
friends  with  us,  to  jest  and  sigh  and  trifle,  to  play  some  whim- 
sical trick  upon  us,  to  transport  us  in  a  moment,  all  unwit- 
tingly, from  laughter  into  weeping,  to  play  upon  all  the 
strings  of  our  hearts.  Writing  of  this  description  is  apt  to  be 
considered  by  the  ignorant  the  easiest  of  all  manner  of  literary 
composi  tion . ' '  — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  The  most  beloved  of  English  writers  may  be  Goldsmith 
or  may  be  Scott  :  the  best  beloved  will  always  be  Charles 
Lamb.  His  charm  is  incomparable  with  any  other  man's. 
It  is  impossible  merely  to  like  him  :  you  must,  as  Wordsworth 
bade  the  redbreast  whom  he  saw  chasing  the  butterfly,  '  love 
him,  or  leave  him  alone.'  .  .  '  .  There  is  in  his  work  a 
sweetness  like  no  other  fragrance,  a  magic  like  no  second 
spell  in  all  the  world  of  letters. " — Sivinburne. 

"  His  Essays  are  carefully  elaborated  ;  yet  never  were 
works  written  in  a  higher  defiance  to  the  conventional  pomp 
of  style  ;  a  sly  hit,  a  happy  pun,  a  humorous  combination  lets 
the  light  into  the  intricacies  of  the  subject,  and  supplies  the 
place  of  ponderous  sentences.  Seeking  his  materials  for  the 
most  part  in  the  common  paths  of  life — often  in  the  humblest 
— he  gives  an  importance  to  everything  and  sheds  a  grace 
over  all." — Talfourd. 


LAMB  339 

"With  what  a  gusto  Mr.  Lamb  describes  the  Inns  and 
Courts  of  law,  the  Temple  and  Gray's  Inn,  as  if  he  had  been 
a  student  there  for  the  last  two  hundred  years,  and  had  been 
as  well  acquainted  with  the  person  of  Sir  Francis  Bacon  as  he 
is  with  his  portrait  or  writings.  .  .  .  There  was  no  fuss 
or  cant  about  him  ;  nor  were  his  sweets  or  sours  ever  diluted 
with  one  particle  of  affectation. " — Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  No  rascally  comparative  insults  a  beggar,  or  thinks  of  weigh- 
ing purses  with  him.  He  is  not  in  the  scale  of  comparison.  He 
is  not  under  the  measure  of  property.  He  confessedly  hath  none 
any  more  than  a  dog  or  a  sheep.  No  one  twitteth  him  with  os- 
tentation above  his  means.  No  one  accuses  him  of  pride,  or  up- 
braideth  him  with  mock-humility.  None  jostle  with  him  for  the 
wall,  or  pick  quarrels  for  precedency.  No  wealthy  neighbor 
seeketh  to  eject  him  from  his  tenement.  No  man  sues  him.  No 
man  goes  to  law  with  him.  If  I  were  not  the  independent  gen- 
tleman that  I  am,  rather  than  I  would  be  a  retainer  to  the  great, 
a  led  captain,  or  a  poor  relation,  I  would  choose,  out  of  the  del- 
icacy and  true  greatness  of  my  mind,  to  be  a  beggar." — The  De- 
cay of  Beggars. 

"  '  A  clear  fire,  a  clean  hearth,  and  the  rigor  of  the  game.' 
This  was  the  celebrated  wish  of  old  Sarah  Battle  (now  with  God), 
who,  next  to  her  devotions,  loved  a  good  game  of  whist.  She 
was  none  of  your  lukewarm  gamesters,  your  half-and-half  play- 
ers, who  have  no  objection  to  take  a  hand,  if  you  want  one  to 
make  up  a  rubber  ;  who  affirm  that  they  have  no  pleasure  in 
winning  ;  that  they  like  to  win  one  game  and  lose  another ;  that 
they  can  while  away  an  hour  very  agreeably  at  a  card-table,  but 
are  indifferent  whether  they  play  or  no ;  and  will  desire  an  ad- 
versary who  has  skipped  a  wrong  card  to  take  it  up  and  play  an- 
other. These  insufferable  triflers  are  the  curse  of  a  table.  One 
of  these  flies  will  spoil  a  whole  pot.  Of  such  it  may  be  said  that 
they  do  not  play  at  cards,  but  only  play  at  playing  at  them." — 
Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist. 

"  I  love  a  fool  as  naturally  as  if  I  was  of  kith  and  kin  to 
him.  When  a  child,  with  childlike  apprehensions  that  dived 


34O  LAMB 

down  below  the  surface  of  the  matter,  I  read  those  Parables— 
not  guessing  at  the  involved  wisdom.  I  had  more  yearnings  tow- 
ard that  simple  architect  that  built  his  home  upon  the  sand  than 
I  entertained  for  his  more  cautious  neighbors.  I  grudged  at  the 
hard  censure  pronounced  upon  the  quiet  soul  that  kept  his  tal- 
ent;  and,  prizing  their  simplicity  beyond  the  more  provident, 
and,  to  my  apprehensions,  somewhat  unfeminine  wariness  of  their 
competitors  — I  felt  a  kindliness  that  almost  amounted  to  a  tcn- 
dre  for  those  five  thoughtless  virgins." — All  FooVs  Day. 

4.  Amiable  Humor. — The  qualities  of  Lamb's  style  al- 
ready discussed  are  continually  found  in  combination  with  the 
most  genial  humor.  This  sometimes  takes  the  form  of  familiar 
juggling  with  high  themes,  sometimes  that  of  playful  apos- 
trophe, such  as  we  see  in  Carlyle  and  Burns,  sometimes  that 
of  the  gravest  and  most  absurd  exaggeration.  His  humor  is 
especially  noteworthy  for  its  freedom  from  sarcasm.  His 
"malice "is  always  playful.  He  laughs  with  men,  not  at 
them.  De  Quincey  calls  him  "a  Diogenes  with  the  heart  of  a 
St.  John."  Charles  Lamb  lived  all  his  life  in  the  shadow  of 
a  terrible  misfortune;  yet  he  has  brightened  the  world  with 
the  kindly  pleasantry  manifest  on  almost  every  page  of  his 
essays.  "Among  all  the  leading  English  essayists,"  says  T.  W. 
Hunt,  "  there  is  none  in  whom  humor  is  so  much  an  essential 
part  of  the  man  and  his  style.  His  face  is  always  promising 
good  things."  "  With  what  well-disguised  humor,"  exclaims 
Hazlitt,  "  he  introduces  us  to  his  relations,  and  how  freely  he 
serves  up  his  friends  !  "  The  Quarterly,  again,  sums  up  this 
quality  by  saying,  "  The  humour  of  Charles  Lamb  is  at  once 
pure  and  genial ;  it  has  no  malice  in  its  smile.  His  keenest 
sarcasm  is  but  his  archest  pleasantry."  Gerald  Massey  and 
others  have  called  Lamb  the  first  English  humorist.  Com- 
paring him  with  the  "crowd  of  jesters,"  a  writer  in  Black- 
wood's  says:  "We  quit  their  uproarious  laughter  for  his 
more  quiet  and  pensive  humor  with  somewhat  of  the  same 
feeling  that  we  leave  the  noisy  though  amusing  highway  for 


LAMB  341 

the  cool  landscape  and  the  soft  greensward.  We  reflect  as  we 
smile ;  the  malice  of  our  nature  is  rather  laid  to  rest  than 
called  forth  ;  a  kindly  and  forgiving  temper  is  excited.  We 
rise  from  his  works,  if  not  with  any  general  truth  more 
vividly  impressed,  yet  prepared  by  gentle  and  almost  imper- 
ceptible touches  to  be  more  social  in  our  companionships 
and  warmer  in  our  friendships." 

"A  combination  of  humor  and  pathos — a  sweet  stream  of 
thought,  bubbling  and  sparkling  with  witty  fancies. 
It  was  colored  by  a  hundred  gentle  feelings.  It  bore  the 
rose  as  well  as  the  thorn.  His  heart  warmed  the  jests  and 
conceits  with  which  his  brain  was  busy,  and  turned  them  into 
flowers." — B.  W.  Procter. 

"  Who,  I  wonder,  ever  managed  to  squeeze  into  a  cor- 
respondence of  forty  years  truer  humour,  madder  nonsense, 
sounder  sense,  or  more  tender  sympathy  !  These  letters  do 
not  indeed  prate  about  first  principles,  but  they  contain  many 
things  conducive  to  a  good  life  here  below." — Augustine 
Birrell. 

"  His  sensibility  to  strong  contrast  was  the  foundation  of 
his  humour,  which  was  that  of  a  wit  at  once  melancholy  and 
willing  to  be  pleased." — Leigh  Hunt. 

"He  succeeds  'glimpse-wise'  in  catching  and  recording 
more  frequently  than  others  the  gayest,  happiest  attitude  of 
things." — Walter  Pater. 

"  One  of  the  gentlest,  tenderest,  rarest,  and  most  delicate  of 
English  humourists.  .  .  .  Lamb's  humour  was  marvellous- 
ly combined  with  pathos ;  his  fun  was  the  sparkle  and  ripple 
and  foam  of  a  richly  running  river  of  humanity,  pity,  and  ten- 
derness. ' ' — George  Dawson. 

"There  is,  indeed,  scarcely  a  note — a  notelet  (as  he  used 
to  call  his  very  little  letters) — Lamb  ever  wrote  which  has  not 
something  of  that  quaint  sweetness,  some  hint  of  that  peculiar 
union  of  kindness  and  whim  which  distinguished  him  from  all 
other  poets  and  humourists."  —  Talfourd. 


342  LAMB 

"What  a  keen,  laughing,  hair-brained  vein  of  homefelt 
truth!  " — Hazlitt. 

"  What  arch,  limpid  humor,  humor  in  its  very  essence,  un- 
forced, honey-sweet,  like  the  drops  exuded  from  the  grapes  by 
their  own  pressure  !  " — G.  W.  Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  a  careless,  even  deportment  hath  your  borrower !  What 
rosy  gills  !  What  a  beautiful  reliance  on  Providence  doth  he  mani- 
fest— taking  no  more  thought  than  lilies !  What  contempt  for 
money — accounting  it  (yours  and  mine  especially)  no  better  than 
dross.  .  .  .  He  is  the  true  taxer  who  calleth  all  the  world  up 
to  be  taxed.  .  .  .  His  exactions,  too,  have  such  a  cheerful, 
voluntary  air  !  So  far  removed  from  your  sour  parochial  or  state- 
gatherers — those  ink-horn  varlets,  who  carry  their  want  of  wel- 
come in  their  faces !  He  cometh  to  you  with  a  smile,  and  troubleth 
you  with  no  receipt  ;  confining  himself  to  no  set  season.  Every 
day  is  his  Candlemas  or  his  Feast  of  Holy  Michael." — The  Two 
Races  of  Men. 

"  The  compliments  of  the  season  to  my  worthy  masters,  and  a 
merry  first  of  April  to  us  all !  Many  happy  returns  of  this  day  to 
you — and  you — and  you,  Sir — nay,  never  frown,  man,  nor  put  a 
long  face  upon  the  matter.  Do  we  not  know  one  another  ?  what 
need  of  ceremony  among  friends  ?  we  have  all  a  touch  of  that 
same — you  understand  me — a  speck  of  the  motley.  Beshrew  the 
man  who,  on  such  a  day  as  this,  \hzgeneral  festival,  should  affect 
to  stand  aloof.  I  am  none  of  those  sneakers.  I  am  free  of  the 
corporation,  and  care  not  who  knows  it.  He  that  meets  me  in 
the  forest  to-day  shall  meet  with  no  wise-acre,  I  can  tell  him. 
Stultus  sum.  Translate  me  that,  and  take  the  meaning  of  it  to 
yourself  for  your  pains.  What,  man,  we  have  four  quarters  of  the 
globe  on  our  side  at  the  least  computation." — All  FooVs  Day. 

"  All  my  intention  was  but  to  make  a  little  sport  with  such 
public  and  fair  game  as  Mr.  Pitt,  Mr.  Wilberforce,  Mrs.  Fitzher- 
bert,  the  Devil,  &c. — gentry  dipped  in  Styx  all  over,  whom  no 
paper  javelin-lings  can  touch.  To  have  made  free  with  these 
cattle  where  was  the  harm  ?  'twould  have  been  but  giving  a  polish 
to  lampblack,  not  nigrifying  a  negro  primarily." — Letter  to  Man- 
ning. 


LAMB  343 

5.  Wit — Epigram — Paronomasia. — Lamb  is  a  wit  as 
well  as  a  humorist.  He  frequently  gives  us  what  De  Quincey 
calls  "minute  scintillations  of  genius."  He  has  "a  talent 
for  saying  keen  pointed  things,  sudden  flashes  or  revelations 
of  hidden  truths,  in  a  short,  condensed  form  of  words."  His 
wit  appears  most  brilliantly  in  his  letters  and  in  his  recorded 
conversations.  "Sometimes  his  wit  appears  in  the  form  of 
epigram,  sometimes  in  a  brilliant  pun,  a  fantastic  coinage,  a 
dash  of  irony." 

"  His  jests  scald  like  tears,  and  he  probes  a  question  with 
a  play  upon  words.  .  .  .  He  is  as  little  of  a  proser 
as  possible ;  but  he  blurts  out  the  finest  wit  and  sense  in 
the  world.  ...  No  one  ever  stammered  out  such  fine, 
piquant,  deep,  eloquent  things  in  a  half-dozen  half-sentences 
as  Lamb  did." — Hazlitt. 

"  Lamb  every  now  and  then  irradiates,  and  the  beam, 
though  single  and  fine  as  a  hair,  is  yet  rich  with  colors,  and  I 
both  see  and  feel  it." — Coleridge. 

"  Here  is  a  rich  vein  of  quaint  surprises,  good  to  recall  as  to 
encounter,  their  after-gust  as  pleasant  (if  not  so  pungent)  as 
their  first  shock." — R.  C.  Brown. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Speaking  of  Cowper  in  one  of  his  letters,  Lamb  writes  :  "  But 
the  poor  gentleman  has  just  recovered  from  his  lunacies,  and  that 
begets  pity,  and  pity  love,  and  love  admiration,  and  then  it  goes 
hard  with  the  people  but  they  lie."  We  append  other  detached 
specimens :  "  When  Southey  becomes  as  modest  as  his  prede- 
cessor, Milton,  and  publishes  his  epics  in  duodecimo,  I  will  read 
"em."  "  George  Dyer  hath  prepared  two  volumes  full  of  poetry 
and  criticism.  They  impend  over  the  town,  and  are  threatened 
to  fall  in  the  winter."  "  Your  woodcock,  snipe,  teal,  widgeon, 
and  other  lesser  daughters  of  the  ark."  "  Clarkson  tells  me 
you  are  in  a  smoky  house.  Have  you  cured  it  ?  It  is  hard  to 
cure  anything  of  smoking."  "  Dear  Wordsworth :  Thanks  for 
the  books  you  have  given  me  and  for  all  the  books  you  mean  to 


344  LAMB 

give  me."  "  Opinion  is  a  species  of  property  that  I  am  always 
desirous  of  sharing  with  my  friends."  "  Godwin  is  five  hundred 
pounds  ideal  money  qut  of  pocket  by  the  failure  of  his  tragedy." 
"  Braham,  the  singer,  is  a  mixture  of  the  Jew,  the  gentleman,  and 
the  angel."  "  Martin  [to  his  friend,  Martin  BurneyJ,  if  dirt  were 
trumps,  what  a  hand  you  would  hold!"  "  Very  well,  my  dear 
boy  [to  Procter],  Ben  Jonson  has  said  worse  things  than  that — 
and  better."  "Charles,"  said  Coleridge  to  Lamb,  "have  you 
ever  heard  me  preach  ?  "  "I  n-n-ever  heard  you  do  anything 
else,"  replied  Lamb.  "  T.  W.  is  severity  years  old  ;  he  has  some- 
thing under  a  competence  ;  he  has  one  joke  and  forty  pounds  a 
year,  upon  which  he  retires  in  a  green  old  age."  "If  I  had  a 
little  son,  I  would  name  him  'Nothing  to  do.'  "  "  But  I  am  your 
factotum,  and  that,  save  in  this  instance,  which  is  a  single  case 
(and  I  can't  get  at  you),  shall  be  next  to  a  fac-nihil — at  most,  a 
fac-simile."  "  Hang  the  Age  !  I  will  write  for  Antiquity  !  " 

"Above  all,  those  insufferable  concertos  and  pieces  of  music, 
as  they  are  called,  do  plague  and  embitter  my  apprehension. 
Words  are  something  ;  but  to  be  exposed  to  an  endless  battery 
of  mere  sounds  ;  to  be  long  a-dying,  to  be  stretched  upon  a  rack 
of  roses  ;  to  keep  up  languor  by  unintermitted  effort  ;  to  pile 
honey  upon  sugar  and  sugar  upon  honey  to  an  interminable 
tedious  sweetness  ;  to  fill  up  sound  with  feeling  and  strain  ideas 
to  keep  pace  with  it ;  to  gaze  on  empty  frames,  and  be  forced  to 
make  the  pictures  for  yourself;  to  read  a  book,  all  stops,  and  be 
obliged  to  supply  the  verbal  matter  ;  to  invent  extempore  trage- 
dies to  answer  to  the  vague  gesture  of  an  inexplicable  rambling 
mime — these  are  faint  shadows  of  what  I  have  undergone  from  a 
series  of  the  ablest-executed  pieces  of  this  empty  instrumental 
music." — A  Chapter  on  Ears. 

"  Dear  old  friend  and  absentee  :  This  is  Christmas  day,  1815. 
What  the  time  be  with  you,  I  do  not  know.  The  I2th  of  June 
next  year,  perhaps.  And  if  it  should  be  the  consecrated  season 
with  you,  I  don't  see  how  you  can  keep  it;  you  have  no  turkeys  ; 
you  would  not  desecrate  the  festival  by  offering  up  a  withered 
Chinese  bantam  instead  of  the  savory  Norfolcian  holocaust  that 
smokes  all  around  my  nostrils  at  this  moment  from  a  thousand 
firesides.  Then,  what  puddings  have  you  ?  Where  will  you  get 
holly  to  stick  into  your  churches,  or  churches  to  stick  (that  must 
be  the  substitute)  ?  What  memorials  you  can  have  of  the  holy 


LAMB  345 

time,  I  see  not.  A  missionary  or  two  may  keep  up  the  idea  of 
the  wilderness.  But  what  standing  evidence  have  you  of  the 
nativity  ?  It  is  our  rosy-cheeked,  home-stalled  divines  whose 
faces  shine  to  the  tune  of  '  Unto  us  a  child  is  born.' '' — Letter  to 
Manning  in  China. 

"  Hang  work  !  1  wish  that  all  the  year  were  a  holiday.  I  am 
sure  that  indolence,  indefeasible  indolence,  is  the  true  state  of 
man,  and  business  the  invention  of  old  Teazer,  whose  interfer- 
ence doomed  Adam  to  an  apron  and  set  him  hoeing." — Letter  to 
Wordsworth. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  smoking  ?  I  want  your  sober,  average 
opinion  ;  I  generally  am  eating  my  dinner  about  the  time  I 
should  determine  it.  Morning  is  a  girl,  and  could  not  smoke  ; 
she  is  no  evidence  one  way  or  the  other  ;  and  night  is  so  bought 
over  that  he  cannot  be  a  very  upright  judge.  Maybe  the  truth 
is,  that  one  pipe  is  wholesome,  two  pipes  toothsome,  three  pipes 
noisome,  four  pipes  fulsome,  five  pipes  quarrelsome,  and  that  is 
the  sum  of  it.  But  this  is  abstaining  rather  upon  rhyme  than 
upon  reason,  for  after  all  our  instincts  may  be  best.'1 — Letter  to 
Coleridge. 

"Two  special  things  are  worth  seeing  at  Cambridge  :  the  por- 
trait of  Cromwell  and  a  better  one  of  Dr.  Harvey,  who  found  out 
that  blood  was  red." — Letter  to  Mrs.  Wordsworth. 

6.  Self -Reflection  — Unselfish  Egoism. —  Lamb 
stamped  upon  all  he  wrote  a  vivid  impression  of  his  own  rare 
individuality.  "  Instead  of  undertaking  to  compose  a  liter- 
ary work  out  of  such  materials  as  he  possessed,"  says  A.  S. 
Hill,  "  Lamb  put  himself,  with  whatever  belonged  to  him, 
on  paper.  .A  reader  is  less  interested  in  the  essays  than  in 
the  essayist."  Almost  every  paragraph  is  liberally  sprinkled 
with  the  first  personal  pronoun,  and  yet  the  reader  never 
feels  that  Lamb  is  egotistical  in  the  ordinary  offensive  sense 
of  that  term  ;  and  the  details  of  his  life,  as  found  in  his 
correspondence,  prove  him  to  have  been  as  shy  and  modest 
as  he  was  generous.  Says  the  Quarterly  Review  :  ' '  Lamb 
calls  up,  completes,  and  leaves  to  the  admiration  of  all  time 
a  character  which,  as  a  personification  of  humour,  is  a  higher 


346  LAMB 

being  than  even  Scott  has  imagined,  viz.,  that  of  Charles 
Lamb  himself."  T.  W.  Hunt  compares  Lamb  to  Burns  in 
that  he  "  gave  vent  to  his  inner  self"  in  his  writings.  At 
the  age  of  twenty-five,  Lamb  wrote  to  Coleridge  :  ' '  For  God's 
sake,  don't  make  me  ridiculous  any  more  by  terming  me  gen- 
tle-hearted in  print,  or  do  it  in  better  verses.  It  did  well 
enough  five  years  ago,  when  I  was  moral  coxcomb  enough  to 
feed  upon  such  epithets.  My  sentiment  is  long  since  van- 
ished. My  virtues  have  done  sucking.  Such  praise  is  fit  only 
for  a  greensick  sonneteer." 

"It  is  the  man  Charles  Lamb  that  constitutes  the  enduring 
charm  of  his  written  works.  .  .  .  He  is  an  egotist — but 
an  egotist  without  a  touch  of  vanity  or  self-assertion — an 
egotist  without  a  grain  of  envy  or  ill-nature.  It  is  this 
humanity  that  gives  to  his  intellect  its  flexibility  and  its  deep 
vision,  that  is  the  feeder  at  once  of  his  pathos  and  of  his 
humour." — Alfred  Ainger. 

"  His  essays  are  delightfully  personal,  and  when  he  speaks 
of  himself,  you  cannot  hear  too  much." — Bryan  Wallet- 
Procter. 

"  Especially  when  he  spoke  of  himself,  and  his  own  re- 
strained and  subdued  life,  was  Lamb  exquisite ;  the  '  sort  of 
double  singleness '  in  which  he  and  his  sister  lived,  their  har- 
mony, their  little  differences,  their  diversified  tastes,  their 
mutual  recollections — nothing  could  be  more  delicately  set 
do w  n . "  — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  love  Quaker  ways  and  Quaker  worship.  I  venerate  the 
Quaker  principles.  It  does  me  good  for  the  rest  of  the  day  when 
I  meet  any  of  their  people  in  my  path.  When  I  am  ruffled  or  dis- 
turbed by  any  occurrence,  the  sight  or  quiet  voice  of  a  Quaker 
acts  upon  me  as  a  ventilator,  lightening  the  air  and  taking  off  a 
load  from  the  bosom.  But  I  cannot  like  the  Quakers  (as  Des- 
demona  would  say)  to  live  with  them.  I  am  all  over  sophisticated 


LAMB  347 

with  humors,  fancies,  craving  hourly  sympathy.  I  must  have 
books,  pictures,  theatres,  chit-chat,  scandal,  jokes,  ambiguities, 
and  a  thousand  whim-whams,  which  their  simpler  taste  can  do 
without.  I  should  starve  at  their  primitive  banquet." — Imperfect 
Sympathies. 

' '  My  reading  has  been  lamentably  desultory  and  unmethodical. 
Old,  out-of-the-way  English  plays  and  treatises  have  supplied  me 
with  most  of  my  notions  and  ways  of  feeling.  In  everything  that 
relates  to  science  I  am  a  whole  encyclopaedia  behind  the  rest  of 
the  world.  I  should  have  scarcely  cut  a  figure  among  the  frank- 
lins or  country  gentlemen  of  King  John's  days.  I  know  less 
geography  than  a  schoolboy  of  six  weeks'  standing.  To  me  a  map 
of  old  Ortelius  is  as  authentic  as  Arrowsmith.  I  do  not  knosv 
whereabout  Africa  merges  into  Asia;  whether  Ethiopia  lies  in  one 
or  the  other  of  those  great  divisions,  nor  can  I  form  the  remotest 
conjecture  of  the  position  of  New  South  Wales  or  Van  Dieman's 
Land.  Yet  do  I  hold  a  correspondence  with  a  very  dear  friend 
in  the  first  named  of  these  two  terra  incognita." —  The  Old  and 
the  New  Schoolmaster. 

"  I  even  think  that  sentimentally  I  am  disposed  to  harmony. 
But  organically  I  am  incapable  of  a  tune.  I  have  been  prac- 
tising 'God  Save  the  Queen'  all  my  life,  whistling  and  hum- 
ming of  it  over  to  myself  in  solitary  corners,  and  am  not  yet 
arrived,  they  tell  me,  within  many  quavers  of  it.  Yet  hath  the 
loyalty  of  Elia  never  been  impeached.  I  am  not  without  sus- 
picion that  I  have  an  undeveloped  faculty  of  music  within  me." 
—  A  Chapter  on  Ears. 

7.  Delicate  Fancy. — Lamb  was  endowed  in  a  rare  de- 
gree with  that  power  that  enables  one  to  create  a  world  for 
himself  and  people  it  at  will.  In  the  words  of  C.  C.  Felton  : 
"  He  possessed  the  power  of  returning  at  will  to  the  heaven 
that  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy ;  or,  rather,  he  never,  except 
during  the  period  of  adolescence,  travelled  far  away  from 
it.  ...  He  does  not  philosophize  about  childhood  with 
Wordsworth,  nor  exhibit  infant  phenomenons  with  Dickens, 
but  is  a  child,  looks  at  the  world  through  a  child's  eyes,  has 
his  night-fears,  his  day-dreams,  his  attachments,  his  repul- 


348  LAMB 

sions,  his  awe  of  the  unknown,  and  his  shrinking  from  the  un- 
familiar."  "  The  streets  of  London,"  says  Hazlitt,  "  are  his 
fairy  land,  teeming  with  wonder,  with  life  and  interest  to  his 
retrospective  glance  as  it  did  to  the  eager  eye  of  childhood  ; 
he  has  contrived  to  weave  his  tritest  traditions  into  a  bright 
and  endless  romance." 

"The  '  Essays  of  Elia'  traverse  a  peculiar  field  of  ob- 
servation, sequestered  from  general  interest,  and  they  are 
composed  in  a  spirit  too  delicate  and  unobtrusive  to  catch 
the  ear  of  the  noisy  crowd  clamoring  for  strong  sensations. ' ' 
— De  Quincey. 

"It  is  vain  to  attempt  to  convey  an  idea  of  the  impression 
left  by  Lamb's  style.  It  evades  analysis.  One  might  as  well 
seek  to  account  for  the  perfume  of  lavender  or  the  flavor  of 
quince.  It  is,  in  truth,  an  essence,  prepared  from  flowers  and 
herbs  gathered  in  fields  where  the  ordinary  reader  does  not 
often  range.  .  .  .  His  style  becomes  aromatic,  like  the 
perfume  of  faded  rose-leaves  in  a  china  jar." — Alfred  Ain- 

g*r-" 

"  His  work  is  small  in  quantity,  but  how  rare  and  delicate 
is  it  in  quality  !  " — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  He  knows  the  secret  of  fine,  significant  touches." — Wal- 
ter Pater. 

"The  most  exquisite  of  essayists  and  the  rarest  of  souls, 
profoundly  original  as  a  stylist  and  as  a  critic." — -J.  M.  Rob- 
ertson. 

"  His  book  has  not  only  the  delicate  aroma  which  suits  the 
most  cultivated,  but  a  something  of  native  fragrance  which 
appeals  to  the  multitude  as  well.  .  .  .  There  are  many 
impatient  readers  who  are  not  capable  of  this  kind  of  litera- 
ture at  all;  who,  indeed,  are  not  to  be  called  readers  at  all, 
but,  on  the  one  side,  workmen  in  mines,  out  of  which  they 
mean  to  draw  substantial  advantage  ;  or,  on  the  other,  like 
the  easy  audience  of  the  Eastern  story-teller — romance-de- 
vourers,  seekers  after  excitement,  if  not  in  act  and  deed,  in 


LAMB  349 

narrative  and  history,  in  something  that  thrills  and  tingles 
the  blood  with  the  keen  vicissitudes  of  a  rapid  tale." — Mrs. 
Oliphant. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Sun-threads,  filmy  beams,  ran  through  the  celestial  napery 
of  what  seemed  its  princely  cradle.  All  the  winged  orders  hov- 
ered round,  watching  when  the  new-born  should  open  its  yet 
closed  eyes  ;  .  .  .  then  were  celestial  harpings  heard,  not 
in  full  sympathy  as  those  by  which  the  spheres  are  tutored,  but 
as  loudest  instruments  on  earth  speak  oftentimes — muffled — so 
as  to  accommodate  their  sound  better  to  the  weak  ears  of  the  im- 
perfect-born. And  with  the  noise  of  those  subdued  soundings 
the  Angelet  sprang  forth,  fluttering  its  rudiments  of  pinions,  but 
forthwith  flagged  and  was  recovered  into  the  arms  of  those  full- 
winged  angels.  And  a  wonder  it  was  to  see  how,  as  the  years 
went  round  in  heaven — a  year  in  dreams  is  as  a  day — continually 
its  white  shoulders  put  forth  buds  of  wings,  but  wanting  the  per- 
fect angelic  nutriment,  anon  was  shorn  of  its  aspiring,  and  fell 
fluttering — still  caught  by  angel  hands  —  forever  to  put  forth 
shoots  and  to  fall  fluttering,  because  its  birth  was  not  of  the  un- 
mixed vigor  of  heaven." — The  Child  Angel, 

"Specially  can  I  forget  thee,  thou  happy  medium,  thou  shade 
of  refuge  between  us  and  them  [the  crew],  conciliating  interpreter 
of  their  skill  to  our  simplicity,  comfortable  ambassador  between 
sea  and  land !  whose  sailor-trousers  did  not  more  convincingly 
assure  thee  to  be  an  adopted  denizen  of  the  former  than  thy 
white  cap  and  whiter  apron  over  them,  with  thy  neat-fingered 
practice  in  thy  culinary  vocation,  bespoke  thee  to  have  been  of 
inland  nurture  heretofore — a  master  cook  of  Eastcheap  ?  How 
busily  didst  thou  ply  thy  multifarious  occupation,  cook,  mariner, 
attendant,  chamberlain  :  here,  there,  like  another  Ariel,  flam- 
ing at  once  about  all  parts  of  the  deck,  yet  with  kindlier  minis- 
trations ;  not  to  assist  the  tempest,  but,  as  if  touched  with  a 
kindred  sense  of  our  infirmities,  to  soothe  the  qualms  which  that 
untried  motion  might  haply  raise  in  our  crude  land-fancies." — 
The  Old  Margate  Hoy. 

"  Hope  is  a  charming,  lively,  blue-eyed  wench,  and  I  am  al- 
ways glad  of  her  company,  but  could  dispense  with  the  visitor 
she  brings  with  her — her  younger  sister,  Fear — a  white-livered, 


350  LAMB 

lily-cheeked,  bashful,  palpitating,  awkward  hussy,  that  hangs 
like  a  green  girl  at  her  sister's  apron-strings,  and  will  go  with  her 
whithersoever  she  goes." — Letters, 

8.  Melancholy. — "The    sad  event  of  Lamb's  life  im- 
parted a  melancholy  to  his  writings,  even  where  they  seem 
to  abound  in  good-humor." — T.  B.  Shaw. 

"  Lamb's  deeper  and  sadder  heart  lay  for  the  most  part  in 
quiet  concealment. ' ' — Edward  Dowden. 

Bulwer  speaks  of  that  "subdued  and  serene  melancholy 
which  rarely  saddens,  but  often  sweetens,  the  music  of  Lamb's 
gentle  laugh." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  These  pleasant  and  some  mournful  passages,  with  the  first 
sight  of  the  sea,  co-operating  with  youth  and  a  sense  of  holidays 
and  out-of-door  adventure,  to  me,  that  had  been  pent  up  in  popu- 
lous cities  for  many  months  before,  have  left  upon  my  mind  the 
fragrance  as  of  summer  days  gone  by,  bequeathing  nothing  but 
their  remembrance  for  cold  and  wintry  hours  to  chew  upon."- 
The  Old  Margate  Hoy. 

"  Alas  !  the  great  and  good  go  together  in  separate  herds  and 
leave  such  as  I  to  lag  far,  far  behind  in  all  intellectual,  and — far 
more  grievous  to  say — in  all  moral  accomplishments.  Wesley 
has  said  :  '  Religion  is  not  a  solitary  thing.'  Alas  !  it  necessarily 
is  so  with  me,  or  next  to  solitary." — Letters 

"  I  pity  you  for  overwork,  but,  I  assure  you,  no  work  is  worse. 
The  mind  preys  on  itself,  the  most  unwholesome  food.  I  bragged 
formerly  that  I  could  not  have  too  much  time.  I  have  now  a  sur- 
feit. With  few  years  to  come,  the  days  are  wearisome." — Letters. 

9.  Critical  Acumen. — "There  is  a  quaint  vigor  of  lan- 
guage, a  fanciful  acuteness  of  observation,  and  such  true  hu- 
manities and  noble  sensibilities  sparkling  everywhere  as  rank 
him  among  the  most  original  critics  of  the  age. " — Allan  Cun- 
ningham. 

"  His  critical  notices  are  extremely  valuable  and  above  any 
praise  of  mine.  ...  If  his  strength  as  a  critic  was — and 


LAMB  351 

remains  for  us — as  the  'strength  of  ten,'  it  was  because  his 
heart  was  pure.  .  .  .  As  a  critic  he  had  no  master — it 
might  almost  be  said  no  predecessor.  He  was  the  inventor  of 
his  own  art.  .  .  .  Lamb's  criticism  as  often  takes  the 
form  of  a  study  of  human  life  as  of  the  dramatic  art. 
Lamb  is  our  best  and  wholesomest  example  of  that  rare  ability 
to  value  and  enjoy  one  great  literary  school  without  at  the 
same  time  disparaging  its  opposites." — Alfred  Ainger. 

"  Lamb's  essay  on  '  Shakespeare's  Tragedies  '  is  one  of  the 
great  documents  of  critical  literature."—;/.  M.  Robertson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  But  the  true  poet  dreams  being  awake.  He  is  not  possessed 
by  his  subject,  but  has  dominion  over  it.  In  the  groves  of  Eden 
he  walks  familiar  as  in  his  native  paths.  He  ascends  the  empy- 
rean heaven,  and  is  not  intoxicated.  He  treads  the  burning 
marl  without  dismay  ;  he  wins  his  flight  without  self-loss  through 
realms  of  chaos  '  and  old  night.'  Or  if,  abandoning  himself  to 
that  severer  chaos  of  a  '  human  mind  untuned,'  he  is  content 
awhile  to  be  mad  with  Lear  or  to  hate  mankind  (a  sort  of  mad- 
ness) with  Timon,  neither  is  that  madness  nor  this  misanthropy 
so  unchecked  but  that,  never  letting  the  reins  of  reason  wholly 
go,  while  most  he  seems  to  do  so,  he  has  his  better  genius  still 
whispering  at  his  ear,  with  the  good  servant  Kent  suggesting 
saner  councils  or  with  the  honest  steward  Flavius  recommend- 
ing kindlier  resolutions.  Where  he  seems  most  to  recede  from 
humanity  he  will  be  found  the  truest  to  it." — The  Sanity  of  True 
Genius. 

"  It  is  an  ordinary  criticism,  that  my  Lord  Shaftesbury  and  Sir 
William  Temple  are  models  of  the  genteel  style  in  writing.  We 
should  prefer  saying— of  the  lordly  and  the  gentlemanly.  Noth- 
ing can  be  more  unlike  than  the  inflated,  finical  rhapsodies  of 
Shaftesbury  and  the  plain ,  natural  chit-chat  of  Temple.  The  man 
of  rank  is  discernible  in  both  writers  ;  but  in  the  one  it  is  only 
insinuated  gracefully,  in  the  other  it  stands  out  offensively.  The 
peer  seems  to  have  written  with  his  coronet  on  and  his  earl's 
mantle  before  him ;  the  commoner  in  his  elbow-chair  and  un- 
dress. What  can  be  more  pleasant  than  the  way  in  which  the 


352  LAMB 

retired  statesman  peeps  out  in  his  essays,  penned  by  the  latter  in 
his  delightful  retreat  at  Sheen  ?  They  scent  of  Nimeguen  and 
the  Hague.  Scarce  an  authority  is  quoted  under  an  ambassa- 
dor."— The  Genteel  Style  in  Writing, 

10.  Discursiveness. — It  is  one  mark  of  Lamb's  col- 
loquial vein,  already  referred  to,  that  he  allows  himself  to 
wander  at  will  from  his  theme  and  to  ramble  whithersoever 
his  lively  fancy  may  lead  him.  In  a  writer  who  addressed 
himself  mainly  to  the  intellect  this  discursiveness  would  be 
regarded  as  a  serious  blemish;  but  in  him  who  "prefers  the 
affections  to  the  sciences  "  we  follow  the  ramblings  with  no 
feelings  but  those  of  quiet  enjoyment.  This  quality  cannot 
well  be  illustrated  without  quoting  an  entire  essay,  but  the  ob- 
servant reader  will  notice  the  frequent  divergencies  from  the 
subject  in  almost  any  of  Lamb's  productions. 


SCOTT,   1771-1832 

Biographical  Outline. — Walter  Scott,  born  in  Edin- 
burgh, August  15,  1771,  the  ninth  of  twelve  children,  six  of 
whom  died  in  infancy  ;  father  a  solicitor,  descended  from  "  a 
great  riding,  sporting,  fighting  clan  "  ;  mother,  daughter  of  a 
physician,  and  better  educated  than  most  Scotch  women  of 
her  day  ;  she  gave  to  her  son  much  of  the  information  and  in- 
spiration for  his  romances  ;  during  Scott's  second  year  a  teeth- 
ing fever  results  in  making  him  lame  for  life  ;  for  the  sake  of 
his  health,  he  is  sent  out  of  the  city  to  reside  with  his  grand- 
father at  the  farm  of  Sandy-Knowe,  southeast  of  Edinburgh  ; 
he  spends  the  sunny  days  with  the  shepherds  among  the  sheep  ; 
shows  an  early  fondness  for  manly  sports  and  heroic  literature  ; 
at  six  reads  poems  aloud  to  his  mother,  and  is  pronounced  "  a 
most  astounding  genius  ";  his  childhood  at  Sandy-Knowe  is 
pictured  in  the  third  canto  of"  Mar  mi  on  "  ;  as  a  child  he 
manifests  remarkable  spirit,  gentleness,  and  self-command ;  at 
school  "  he  glanced  like  a  meteor  from  one  end  of  the  class  to 
the  other,"  and  "  received  more  praise  for  his  interpretation 
of  the  spirit  of  his  authors  than  for  his  knowledge  of  their  lan- 
guage "  ;  out  of  school  he  extemporizes  innumerable  stories 
for  his  comrades,  and  becomes  a  daring  leader  in  all  athletic 
sports  and  ventures ;  masters  Latin  fairly,  but  refuses  to  study 
Greek  ;  studies  first  at  the  High  School  at  Edinburgh  and  then 
at  a  school  in  Kelso,  where  the  master  becomes  a  friend  and 
an  inspiration  ;  from  boyhood,  Scott  is  "  a  worshipper  of  the 
past  "  and  an  in  tense  conservative;  he  enters  the  University  of 
Edinburgh  in  1783,  remains  three  years,  and  obtains,  in  ad- 
dition to  his  Latin,  some  knowledge  of  French  and  German  ; 
23  353 


354  SCOTT 

displays  a  phenomenal  memory,  great  power  of  physical  en- 
durance, and  great  fondness  for  romance ;  begins  to  study  law, 
first  as  an  apprentice  to  his  father  and  afterward  at  the  Uni- 
versity ;  is  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1796  ;  in  1787  he  suffers 
from  a  hemorrhage,  and,  during  the  absolute  silence  imposed 
as  an  essential  of  recovery,  begins  "his  study  of  the  scenic 
side  of  history";  reads  voraciously  in  the  line  of  military 
exploit,  romance,  and  mediaeval  legend ;  learns  Italian  and 
Spanish,  and  reads  Cervantes,  whose  novels,  he  says,  "  first 
inspired  me  to  excel  in  fiction"  ;  he  tramps  about  the  coun- 
try so  much  in  search  of  natural  beauty  and  historic  associa- 
tions that  his  father  pronounces  him  "  better  fitted  for  a  ped- 
dler than  a  lawyer  ' '  ;  often  walks  thirty  miles  a  day,  though 
still  very  ame,  and  has  many  adventures  and  some  carousals  ; 
he  studies  the  law  carefully,  however,  and  succeeds  respect- 
ably, though  he  is  a  poor  debater  ;  practises  law  more  or  less 
for  fourteen  years,  never  earning  over  ^230  a  year  ;  he 
serves  as  Clerk  of  Session  for  several  years  without  a  sal- 
ary ;  in  1790  he  falls  violently  in  love  with  the  daughter 
of  Sir  John  Belcher,  but  the  lady  marries  another  in  1796  ; 
Scott's  success  as  a  lawyer  is  marred  by  his  "  dabblings 
in  poetry"  and  by  his  reputation  for  "wild  and  unpro- 
fessional adventurousness  "  ;  he  visits  London  and  becomes 
widely  known  for  his  ballads  of  love,  etc.;  in  1797  he  mar- 
ries Miss  Charpentier  (Carpenter),  daughter  of  a  French  Roy- 
alist of  Lyons — "  a  bird  of  paradise  mating  with  an  eagle"  ; 
his  first  serious  literary  attempt  is  a  translation  of  Burger's 
"  Lenore,"  made  in  1795  and  published  in  1796;  in  1798 
he  publishes  a  translation  of  Goethe's  "  Gottz  von  Berliching- 
en,"  and  in  1799  the  ballads  "  Glenfinlas,"  "The  Eve  of 
St.  John,"  and  "The  Grey  Brother"  ;  in  January,  1802, 
publishes  the  first  two  volumes  of  "  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish 
Border"  (including  several  ballads  from  his  own  pen); 
the  first  edition  (eight  hundred  copies)  is  sold  within  one 
year,  and  Scott  becomes  famous ;  he  publishes  the  third  vol- 


SCOTT  355 

ume  of  the  "  Minstrelsy  "  in  1803  ;  in  1805  publishes  "  The 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  "  (begun  in  1802),  of  which  44,000 
copies  were  sold  regularly  during  the  following  twenty-five 
years,  bringing  Scott  ^769;  he  publishes,  "  Marmion  " 
(largely  composed  in  the  saddle)  in  1808,  and  receives  one 
thousand  guineas  for  the  copyright  before  publication  ;  during 
1808  he  also  edits  elaborate  editions  of  Dryden  and  Swift, 
adding  critical  notes  and  a  biography  to  each;  from  1798  to 
1804  he  resides  at  Lasswade,  six  miles  from  Edinburgh  ;  he 
then  removes  to  Ashestiel,  in  Selkirkshire,  a  few  miles  up  the 
Tweed  from  Abbotsford,  where  he  resides  till  1812  ;  while 
at  Ashestiel  he  writes  and  publishes  "The  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel,"  "  The  Lady  of  the  Lake  "  (for  which  he  receives 
^2,000  at  its  publication),  "The  Bridal  of  Triermain,"  a 
part  of  "  Rokeby,"  and  a  vast  amount  of  other  material ;  in 
1 799  he  is  made  Sheriff  of  Selkirkshire,  with  a  salary  of  ^£300 
a  year,  an  office  that  he  holds  till  shortly  before  his  death ;  he 
becomes  an  officer  in  the  Edinburgh  volunteer  cavalry,  and 
gives  much  attention  to  military  affairs;  in  1812,  having 
come  into  the  salary  of  the  Clerkship  of  Session,  Scott  buys 
"  a  mountain  farm  "  of  one  hundred  acres,  five  miles  down 
the  Tweed  from  Ashestiel,  paying  ^4,000,  half  of  which  he 
borrows  from  his  brother  on  the  security  of  a  poem  ("  Roke- 
by ")  not  then  written  ;  he  takes  to  Abbotsford  much  of  the 
material  forming  the  present  "  armory  "  there,  and  resides  at 
Abbotsford  till  his  death,  repeatedly  enlarging  the  estate  by 
buying  up  adjacent  lands  until  his  estate  reaches  1,000 
acres,  and  costs,  for  the  land  alone,  ^£29  ooo  ;  he  surrounds 
himself  at  Abbotsford  with  numerous  pet  dogs  and  other 
animals,  devotes  much  time  to  tree-planting,  and  entertains 
there  many  noted  people;  in  1802  he  sends  ^500  to  James 
Ballantyne,  a  former  school-fellow  at  Kelso,  who  had  printed 
Scott's  first  work,  and  induces  him  to  remove  to  Edinburgh  ; 
in  1805  Scott  becomes  a  silent  partner  with  Ballantyne  in  the 
printing  business,  and  in  1809  the  admission  of  John,  brother 


356  SCOTT 

to  James  Ballantyne,  results  in  the  firm  of  John  Ballantyne  & 
Co.,  booksellers  and  publishers;  in  1812-14  the  concern  is 
saved  from  bankruptcy  only  by  the  receipts  from  "  Waverley  " 
(begun  in  1805  and  published  in  1814)  ;  "  Waverley  "  is  pub- 
lished anonymously,  and  meets  with  astounding  success,  over 
60,000  copies  being  sold  up  to  1825  ;  during  1811-14  Scott 
corresponds  with  Byron,  Southey,  and  his  friend  Sir  Hum- 
phry Davy;  publishes  "  Rokeby  "  in  1812  and  the  "Bri- 
dal of  Triermain  "  in  1813;  10,000  copies  of  "Rokeby" 
are  sold  within  three  months  after  publication  ;  Scott  declines 
the  offer  of  the  laureateship  in  1813;  visits  the  Shetland 
Isles  in  1814;  in  January,  1815,  publishes  "The  Lord  of 
the  Isles,"  and  in  February,  "  Guy  Mannering,"  in  two  vol- 
umes ;  he  receives  ^£2,000  for  "  Guy  Mannering  ,"  of  which 
2,000  copies  were  sold  the  day  after  its  publication  and  50,000 
up  to  1838,  in  Great  Britain  alone;  he  publishes,  also,  "Paul's 
Letters  to  His  Kinsfolk"  early  in  1815  ;  visits  London  in 
March,  1815,  remaining  two  months,  and  meeting  Byron  and 
the  Prince  Regent,  who  gives  a  dinner  in  Scott's  honor;  visits 
Brussels  and  the  field  of  Waterloo  soon  after  the  battle,  in 
August,  1815,  and  returns  to  Abbotsford  in  September,  after 
spending  some  time  in  Paris  ;  publishes  his  poem  "  The  Field 
of  Waterloo  "  in  October,  1815,  and  "The  Antiquary"  in 
May,  1816  ;  6,000  copies  of  the  latter  were  sold  within  six 
days  after  publication  ;  in  December,  1816,  still  preserving 
his  incognito,  Scott  publishes,  through  Murray,  the  first 
series  of  "Tales  of  My  Grandfather,"  containing  "The  Black 
Dwarf"  and  "Old  Mortality";  4,000  copies  were  sold  with- 
in six  weeks;  in  January,  1817,  he  publishes  "Harold  the 
Dauntless,"  begun  several  years  before,  and  makes  a  fruitless 
effort  to  secure  an  appointment  as  Baron  of  the  Exchequer  ; 
he  is  severely  ill  during  the  winter  of  1817,  and  later  in  that 
year  entertains,  at  Abbotsford,  Lady  Byron  and  Washington 
Irving;  in  December  he  completes  and  publishes  "Rob Roy," 
of  which  40,000  copies  were  sold  in  Great  Britain  up  to 


SCOTT  357 

1838  ;  publishes  "  The  Heart  of  Midlothian  "  in  June,  1818; 
at  this  time  the  annual  profits  on  his  novels  were  about  ^10,- 
ooo ;  for  several  years  prior  to  1818  Scott  edits  the  "  Edin- 
burgh Annual  Register,"  a  history  of  the  world  for  each  pre- 
ceding year,  making  an  annual  volume  of  about  four  hundred 
pages  ;  while  in  Edinburgh  he  lives  in  Castle  Street ;  declares 
in  1818  that  his  annual  expenditure  for  postage  alone  reaches 
^150;  in  November,  1818,  he  accepts  the  offer  of  a  baro- 
netcy ;  in  December,  1818,  sells  all  his  existing  copyrights  to 
Constable  &  Co.  for  ^12,000,  they  agreeing  not  to  reveal 
the  author's  name  under  a  forfeit  of  ^£2,000  ;  Scott  suffers  a 
return  of  his  stomach  malady  in  the  spring  of  1819,  and  dic- 
tates "  The  Bride  of  Lammermoor,"  "  The  Legend  of  Mont- 
rose  "  (both  published  in  1819),  and  the  greater  part  of 
"Ivanhoe"  while  suffering  intense  physical  pain ;  he  enter- 
tains Prince  Leopold  of  Saxe-Cobourg  and  Miss  Edgeworth 
in  the  summer  of  1819,  and  publishes  "  Ivanhoe  "  during  the 
following  autumn  ;  it  is  received  "  with  clamorous  delight  "  ; 
during  the  winter  of  1819-20  he  publishes  the  essays  entitled 
"  The  Visionary,"  giving  his  views  "  on  certain  popular  doc- 
trines and  delusions"  ;  entertains  Prince  Gustavus  Vasa  at 
Edinburgh  in  the  winter  of  1820,  and  publishes  "  The  Mon- 
astery "  in  the  following  March  ;  proceeds  to  London  to  re- 
ceive his  baronetcy,  and,  at  the  request  of  George  IV.,  sits  for 
his  portrait,  to  be  hung  in  the  royal  gallery  at  Windsor  ;  sits 
also  for  the  bust  that  now  best  represents  him  ;  becomes  "  Sir 
Walter  Scott  "  March  30,  1820,  King  George  conferring  the 
honor  in  person  ;  in  May,  1820,  Scott  receives  tenders  of  the 
degree  of  D.C.L.  from  both  Oxford  and  Cambridge  ;  in  Sep- 
tember, 1820,  he  publishes  "The  Abbot,"  a  continuation  of 
"  The  Monastery,"  but  the  novel  is  not  a  success  ;  in  Novem- 
ber is  elected  president  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh  ; 
publishes  "  Kenilworth  "  in  January,  1821,  and  begins  to 
edit  Ballantyne's  "  Novelist's  Library  "  ;  in  November,  1821, 
sells  to  Constable  the  copyrights  of  "  Ivanhoe,"  "  The  Mon- 


358  SCOTT 

astery,"  "The  Abbot,"  and  "  Kenilworth  "  for  five  thou- 
sand guineas,  repeating  the  forfeit  clause  of  ^2,000  to  insure 
his  incognito;  Scott  had  already  received  ^10,000  profits 
from  these  four  novels  ;  signs  a  contract,  also,  for  "  four  works 
of  fiction  yet  to  be  written  ";  publishes  "The  Pirate"  in 
December,  1821,  "The  Fortunes  of  Nigel"  in  May,  1822, 
and  "  Halidon  Hill"  in  June,  1822  ;  superintends  repairs  to 
the  ruin  of  Melrose  Abbey  and  manages  the  popular  recep- 
tion to  George  IV.  at  Edinburgh  in  the  summer  of  1822  ; 
publishes  "  Peveril  of  the  Peak  "  in  January,  1823,  "  Quen- 
tin  Durward  "  in  June,  and  "  St.  Ronan's  Well  "  in  Decem- 
ber; the  comparatively  cold  reception  given  to  the  last  two 
novels  alarms  both  Scott  and  Constable,  his  publisher  ;  lie 
publishes  "  Redgauntlet"  in  June,  1824,  and  completes  his 
mansion  at  Abbotsford  in  November;  publishes  "Tales  of 
the  Crusaders,"  including  "The  Talisman"  and  "Be- 
trothed," in  June,  1825  ;  visits  Ireland  in  July,  and  is  pub- 
licly honored  at  Dublin  ;  entertains  Moore  at  Abbotsford 
in  the  autumn  ;  is  alarmed  by  rumors  of  the  failure  of  Consta- 
ble, with  whom  Scott  and  the  Ballantynes  had  been  long  and 
intricately  involved  in  business,  but  "  the  storm  blows  over"  ; 
Scott  gives  up  hunting  and  begins  his  diary  in  November, 
1825,  registering  his  purpose  "to  practise  economics  ";  on 
January  17,  1826,  both  Constable  and  the  Ballantyne  firm  be- 
come bankrupt,  and  Scott  is  left,  in  his  own  words,  "  a  beg- 
gar "  ;  January  2ist  he  writes  in  his  diary  :  "  Naked  we  en- 
tered this  world,  and  naked  we  leave  it — blessed  be  the  name 
of  the  Lord  "  ;  on  the  next  day,  spurring  himself  for  his  he- 
roic undertaking  (which  was  nothing  less  than  to  earn  over 
half  a  million  dollars  by  his  pen  and  so  to  pay  up  the  debts  of 
the  firm),  he  writes  :  "  Well !  Exertion — exertion — exertion  ! 
O  invention,  rouse  thyself!  may  man  be  kind  !  may  God  be 
propitious  !  The  worst  is,  I  never  quite  know  when  I  am 
right  or  wrong  "  ;  he  disdains  to  take  advantage  of  the  bankrupt 
act,  and  begins  "  Woodstock,"  averaging  thirty  pages  a  day; 


SCOTT  359 

is  greatly  depressed  by  the  illness  of  Lady  Scott,  who  dies 
May  15,  1826;  publishes  "Woodstock"  in  April,  1826, 
and  receives  ^£8,228  in  cash  for  the  copyright;  leaves  A  b- 
botsford  for  London  in  October,  and  proceeds  thence  to 
Paris  in  search  of  material  for  his  "  Life  of  Napoleon  "  ;  is 
received  with  great  public  honors  in  both  cities,  and  returns 
to  Abbotsford  late  in  November  ;  first  acknowledges  the  au- 
thorship of  the  Waverley  novels  in  February,  1827;  publishes 
"  Chronicles  of  the  Canongate  "  and  the  second  series  of 
"  Tales  of  a  Grandfather"  in  December,  1828  ;  during  the 
same  month,  after  being  unconsciously  rescued  from  the 
clutches  of  a  firm  of  London  Jewish  brokers  by  friends, 
Scott  sells  his  remaining  copyrights,  including  the  "  Chron- 
icles," for  ^8,500,  and  pays  the  Ballantyne  creditors  six 
shillings  in  the  pound  ;  that  is,  he  had  earned,  during  the 
previous  two  years,  about  ^40,000;  during  1828  he  begins  a 
new  edition  of  his  poems,  with  biographical  prefaces,  and  a 
new  edition  of  the  novels,  with  elaborate  notes ;  publishes 
"The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth"  in  March,  1828,  and  the  third 
series  of  "Tales  of  a  Grandfather"  in  December;  during 
1829,  though  in  continual  ill-health,  he  publishes  "Anne  of 
Geierstein,"  the  fourth  series  of  "Tales  of  a  Grandfather," 
and  the  first  volume  of  "  Scottish  History  "  (in  Lardner's  Cy- 
clopaedia) ;  during  1830  he  publishes  the  second  volume  of  the 
"  Scottish  History  "  and  the  new  edition  of  his  poems  ;  suf- 
fers a  stroke  of  paralysis  in  February  and  another  soon  after- 
ward ;  declines  a  royal  pension  and  the  rank  of  Privy  Coun- 
cillor in  the  summer  of  1830  ;  publishes  "  Demonology  "  and 
"  The  History  of  France  "  during  the  same  summer,  and  by 
September  has  paid  over  one-half  of  the  vast  debt ;  in  De- 
cember, 1830,  he  pays  his  creditors  another  three  shillings 
in  the  pound,  and  they  release  to  him  his  Abbotsford  furni- 
ture, linens,  plate,  paintings,  library,  and  curiosities  of  every 
description,  on  which  they  had  held  a  claim  (the  estate  of 
Abbotsford  had  previously  been  entailed  to  Scott's  oldest  son) ; 


360  SCOTT 

Scott  has  another  attack  of  apoplexy  in  August,  1831,  but 
rallies,  and,  against  the  advice  of  all  his  physicians  and  the 
entreaties  of  friends,  completes  and  publishes  "  Count  Robert 
of  Paris  "  and  "  Castle  Dangerous  "  ;  during  the  summer  he 
entertains  at  Abbotsford  the  artist  Turner,  who  comes  to 
make  drawings  for  illustrating  Scott's  poems,  and  also  Words- 
worth, who  comes  to  bid  Scott  farewell  before  the  latter's 
tour  to  Italy  in  search  of  health  ;  Wordsworth  afterward  com- 
memorates the  visit  in  his  "  Yarrow  Revisited  "  ;  Scott  leaves 
Abbotsford  September  23,  1831,  spends  a  month  in  London, 
meeting  again  Moore,  Irving,  and  many  other  old  friends, 
and  sails  from  Portsmouth  October  2gih  in  the  Barhant,  a 
royal  frigate  placed  at  his  disposal  by  the  king  ;  he  is  accom- 
panied by  his  eldest  son,  Major  Walter  Scott,  then  connected 
with  the  British  embassy  at  Rome  ;  reaches  Malta  November 
25th;  thence  to  Naples,  where  his  younger  son,  Charles, 
awaits  him  and  where  Scott  receives  royal  attentions  ;  in  spite 
of  remonstrances,  he  begins  and  nearly  finishes  ' '  The  Siege 
of  Malta"  and  "Bizzano,"  neither  of  which  he  publishes; 
leaves  Naples  April  16,  1832,  accompanied  by  his  son  Charles, 
and  starts  homeward  by  way  of  the  Tyrol  and  the  Rhine; 
spends  several  weeks  in  Rome,  leaving  there  May  nth; 
hastens  through  Florence,  Bologna,  Venice,  Innspruck,  Mu- 
nich, Heidelberg,  and  Frankfort,  travelling  night  and  day  in 
the  hope  of  reaching  Abbotsford  before  his  death,  which  he 
knew  to  be  near  ;  thence  down  the  Rhine  to  Cologne  ;  suffers 
another  severe  stroke  of  apoplexy  when  near  Minguen,  June 
9th,  which  renders  him  helpless;  by  steamer  from  Rotterdam, 
reaching  London  June  i3th,  where  he  remains  till  early  in 
July,  unconscious  most  of  the  time ;  thence,  accompanied  by 
his  two  daughters  and  by  Lockhart,  by  steamer  to  Edinburgh 
and  thence  to  Abbotsford,  which  he  reaches  July  i2th; 
Lockhart  writes :  "At  the  sight  of  his  own  towers  he  sprang 
up  with  a  cry  of  delight";  his  health  improves  during  the 
first  weeks  after  reaching  Abbotsford,  but  then  steadily  de- 


SCOTT  361 

clines  till  his  death  there,  September  21,  1832  ;  his  unmarried 
daughter,  Anne,  receives  from  the  privy  purse  of  William  IV. 
a  pension  of  ^200  till  her  death,  in  1833 ;  his  eldest  son 
succeeds  him  in  the  baronetcy,  and  his  daughter,  the  wife  of 
Lockhart,  is  buried  by  the  side  of  Sir  Walter,  at  Dryburgh,  in 
1837;  his  obligations  to  his  creditors,  amounting  to  ^54,000 
at  his  death,  are  settled  by  means  of  ^£22,000  of  life  insur- 
ance, the  balance  being  assumed  by  Cadell,  the  publisher,  on 
the  security  of  unexpired  copyrights. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON  SCOTT'S  STYLE. 

Devey,  J.,  "A  Comparative  Estimate,  etc."  London,  1873,  E.  Moxon, 
212-225. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."  Boston,  1867,  Ticknor,  I: 
318-329. 

Shairp,  J.  C.,  "Aspects of  Poetry."  Boston,  1882,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 
Co.,  323-349- 

Stephen,  L.,  "Hours  in  a  Library."  New  York,  1894,  Putnam,  I: 
137-169. 

Hutton,   R.  H.,  "  Sir  Walter  Scott."     New  York,  1878,  Harper. 

Yonge,  C.  D.,  "Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott."  London,  1888,  Walter 
Scott. 

Canning,  A.  S.  G.,  "  Philosophy  of  the  Waverley  Novels."  London, 
1879,  Smith,  Elder  &  Co. 

Bagehot,  W.,  "Literary  Studies"  (Works).  Hartford,  1889,  Travel- 
lers' Insurance  Co.,  2:  197—239. 

Jeffrey,  F.,  "  Modern  British  Essayists."  Philadelphia,  1852,  A.  Hart, 
6  :  359-38°.  etc. 

Carlyle,  T.,  "  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. "  London,  1847,  Chap- 
man &  Hall,  4  :  99-165. 

Masson,  D.,  "  Sir  Walter  Scott. "     New  York,  1893,  Whittaker. 

Sainte-Beuve,  C.  A.,  "Essays."     London,  1893,  W.  Scott,  164-167. 

Watt,  J.  C.,  "Great  Novelists."  Edinburgh,  1880,  Macniven  &  Wal- 
lace, 1-96. 

Oliphant,  Mrs.,  "Literary  History  of  England."  New  York,  1889, 
Macmillan,  2:  80-152. 

Landon,  L.  E.,  "Life  and  Literary  Remains  of  L.  E.  L."  London, 
1841,  Colburn,  2:  81-194. 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "Lectures  on  the  English  Poets."  London,  1884,  G.  Bell 
&  Sons,  205-207. 


362  SCOTT 

Hazlitt,  W.,  "Spirit  of  the  Age."     London,  1886,  G.  Bell  &  Sons,  97- 

117. 
Lang,  A.,  "Letters  to   Dead  Authors."     New  York,  1892,  Longmans, 

Green  &  Co.,  127-136. 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "Miscellaneous  Works."     New  York,  1880,  Harper, 

1 :  200,  etc.,  v.  index. 

Masson,  D.,  "  British  Novelists."     Boston,  1892,  W.  Small,  161-214. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of   English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  323-340. 
Taine,    H.  A.,    "History  of    English   Literature."      New    York,    1875, 

Holt,  2  :  73-80  and  v.  index. 
Ward,    T.    H.  (Goldwin  Smith),  "The   English    Poets."     New   York, 

1881,  Macmillan,  4:    186-194. 

Gilfillan,   G.,  "Life  of  Sir  Walter  'Scott."     Edinburgh,    1871,  W.   Oli- 

phant  &  Co. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  "Lives  of  Famous  Poets."    London,  1885,  E.  Moxon, 

219-234. 
Tuckerman,   B.,  "A    History  of  English  Prose   Fiction."     New  York, 

1882,  Putnam,  278-284. 

Veitch,  J.,  "The  History  and  Poetry  of  the  Scottish  Border."  Edin- 
burgh, 1898,  Blackwood,  496-578. 

Welsh,  A.  H.,  "The  Development  of  English  Literature."  Chicago, 
1884,  Griggs,  2  :  321-330. 

Lang,  A.,  "  Essays  in  Little."     New  York,  1891,  Scribner,  171-182. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "History  of  English  Literature."  London,  1892, 
Nelson,  399-413. 

Rice,  A.  T.,  "  Essays  from  North  American  Review  (W.  H.  Prescott)." 
New  York,  1879,  Appleton,  3-63. 

Talfourd,  T.  N.,  "Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays."  Boston,  1854, 
Phillips,  Sampson  &  Co.,  11-15. 

Duyckinck,  E.  A.,  "  Portrait  Gallery."  New  York,  1875,  Johnson,  Wil- 
son &  Co.,  i:  476-488. 

Knight,  C.,  "  Gallery  of  Portraits."  London,  1837,  C.  Knight  &  Co., 
7  :  185-197. 

Mason,  E.  T.,  "  Personal  Traits  of  British  Authors."  New  York,  1885, 
Scribner,  3  :  1-7. 

Pebody,  C.,  "Authors  at  Work."  London,  1872,  W.  H.  Allen  &  Co., 
36-85. 

Reed,  H.,  "  British  Poets."  Philadelphia,  1857,  Parry  &  McMillan,  2: 
60-89. 

Jeaffreson,  J.  C. ,  "Novels  and  Novelists."  London,  1858,  Hurst  & 
Blackett,  2  :  31-84. 


SCOTT  363 

Allibone,   S.    A.,   "A    Critical    Dictionary  of   Authors."     Philadelphia, 

1891,  Lippincott,  2  :  1964-1979. 
Bryant,  W.  C. ,  "  Orations  and  Addresses."     New  York,  1873,  Putnam, 

387-393. 
Chorley,  H.  F.,  "The  Authors  of  England."     London,   1838,  C.  Tilt, 

7-13- 
Courthope,   W.    J.,  "The  Liberal   Movement    in    English  Literature." 

London,  1885,  Murray,  111-156. 
Dennis,   J.,    "Heroes  of  Literature."     New  York,    1883,  E.   &  J.   B. 

Young,  300-321. 
Dickson,   N.,  "The   Bible  in   Waverley."     Edinburgh,  1884,  A.   &  C. 

Black. 
Graham,  W.,  "  Lectures,    Sketches,  etc."     Edinburgh,  1873,   Seaton  & 

Mackenzie,  153-163. 
Howitt,  W.,  "  Homes   and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,  1863, 

Routledge,  446-486. 
Irving,  W.,   "  Abbotsford   and  Newstead  Abbey."     New  York,   1852, 

Putnam,  201-379. 
Jerrold,  B.,  "  The  Best  of  All  Good  Company."     London,  1871,  W.  T. 

Gill,  85-160. 
Lennox,  Lord  W.  P.,  "Celebrities   I    have  Known."      London,   1877, 

Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :  21-33. 
Lockhart,     J.     G.,     "Memoirs    of     Walter     Scott."       Boston,    1881, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 
Mackay,  C.,  "  Forty  Years'  Recollections."     London,  1877,  Chapman  & 

Hall,  I  :  175-206. 
Martineau,   H.,  "  Miscellanies."     Boston,  1836,   Hilliard,  Gray  &  Co., 

I  :   1-12  and  27-56. 
Senior,   W.    W.,  "  Essays   on   Fiction."     London,    1864,  Longmans  & 

Green,  1-185. 
Prescott,  W.  H.,  "  Biographical  and  Critical  Miscellanies."  Philadelphia, 

1869,  Lippincott. 
Dawson,  W.  J.,  "  The  Makers  of  Modern  English."     New  York,  1890, 

Whittaker,  61-71. 
Mitford,  M.  R.,  "Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."     New  York,  1851, 

Harper,  424-442. 
Minto,    W.,    "  Literature  of    the    Georgian    Era."     New  York,   1895, 

Harper,  235-253  and  286-289. 
Gibson,  John,  "  Reminiscences  of  Sir  Walter  Scott."     Edinburgh,  1871, 

A.  &  C.  Black. 

Doyle,  Sir  F.   H.,  "  Lectures   on  Poetry."     London,  1869,  Macmillan, 
182-183,  78-127. 


364  SCOTT 

"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  gth  edition  (W.  Minto).  Edinburgh,  1871, 
Bell,  21  :  544-551. 

Everett,  E.,  "The  Mount  Vernon  Papers."  New  York,  1860,  Apple- 
ton,  115-123  and  135-144. 

Moir,  D.,  "  Sketches  of  Poetical  Literature."  Cambridge,  1856,  Black- 
wood,  116-127. 

Yonge,  C.  D.,  "Three  Centuries  of  English  Literature."  New  York, 
1889,  Appleton,  294-332. 

Masson,  D.,  "In  the  Footsteps  of  the  Poets"  (J.  Dennis).  New 
York,  1893,  Whittaker,  235-279. 

Phillips,  M.  G.,  "  A  Manual  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1893, 
Harper,  I  :  265-330  and  v.  index. 

Quarterly  Review,  27  :  337-364  ;  26  :  110-130  (A.  W.  Senior). 

Atlantic  Monthly,  46  :  313-320  (T.   S.  Perry)  ;  69:  139-142. 

Edinburgh  Review,  28  :  193-259  (Jeffrey) ;  29  :  403-432  (Jeffrey)  ;  55  : 
61-69;  6:  1-20  (Jeffrey) ;  16  :  263-293  ;  24  :  208-242  (Jeffrey). 

North  American  Review,  99  .-  5^3~S^7  (Senior) ;  46  :  445-474  (Lock- 
hart) ;  36:  289-315  (Cunningham);  32:  386-421  (Pebody)  ;  35: 
1 72-1 73  and  187-189  (W.  H.  Prescott). 

The  Forum,  14  :  503-513  (Mallock). 

The  Nation,  13:  103-104  (J.  R.  Dennett). 

Harper's  Magazine,  43:  5 1 1-5 14 (Mrs.  Z.  B.  Buddington). 

Macmillan's  Magazine,  26  :  168  (Frere). 

Fraser's  Magazine,  5  :  207-217;  36:  345-351. 

Monthly  Review,  2  :  569-581. 

Nineteenth  Century  Magazine,  7  :  941-962  (Ruskin). 

BlackwoooTs  Magazine,  19:   152-160;    no:  229-256. 

New  Monthly  Magazine,  46  :  79-85  (Scott). 

Contemporary  Review,  23  :   514-539  (J.  Wedgewood). 

Good  Words,  16  :  500-508  (J.  C.  Shairp). 

National  Review,  6  :  444-472. 

Saturday  Review,  14:  746-748. 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Vivid  Personal  Portraiture.— Sainte  Beuve,  who  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  critic  whom  the  nineteenth  century  has 
produced,  calls  Sir  Walter  Scott  "  an  immortal  painter  of  hu- 
manity." Richard  Henry  Hutton  says:  "  Indeed,  whether 
Scott  draws  truly  or  falsely,  he  draws  with  such  genius  that 
his  pictures  of  Richard  and  Saladin,  of  Louis  XI.  and  Charles 


SCOTT  365 

the  Bold,  of  Margaret  of  Anjou  and  Rene  of  Provence,  of 
Mary  Stuart  and  Elizabeth  Tudor,  of  Sussex  and  Leicester, 
of  James  and  Charles  and  Buckingham,  of  the  two  Dukes  of 
Argyle — the  Argyle  of  the  time  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
Argyle  of  George  II. — of  Queen  Caroline,  of  Claverhouse  and 
Monmouth  and  Rob  Roy,  will  live  in  English  literature  be- 
side Shakespeare's  pictures  —  probably  less  faithful  if  more 
imaginative  —  of  John  and  Richard  and  the  later  Henries 
and  all  the  great  figures  by  whom  they  are  surrounded.  No 
historical  portrait  that  we  possess  will  take  precedence  — 
as  a  mere  portrait — of  Scott's  brilliant  study  of  James  I.  in 
'  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel.1  ' 

"You  find  everywhere  in  Walter  Scott  a  remarkable  se- 
curity and  thoroughness  in  his  delineations,  which  proceed 
from  his  comprehensive  knowledge  of  the  real  world,  obtained 
by  lifelong  studies  and  observations  and  a  daily  discussion 
of  the  most  important  relations.  He  is  equal  to  his  subject 
in  every  direction  in  which  it  takes  him ;  the  king,  the  royal 
brother,  the  prince,  the  head  of  the  clergy,  the  nobles,  the 
magistracy,  the  citizens  and  mechanics,  the  Highlanders,  are 
all  drawn  with  the  same  sure  hand  and  hit  off  with  equal 
truth." — Goethe. 

"It  seemed  as  if  the  author  had  transferred  into  his  page 
the  strong  delineations  of  the  Homeric  pencil,  the  rude  but 
generous  gallantry  of  a  primitive  period,  softened  by  the  more 
airy  and  magical  inventions  of  Italian  romance." — W.  H. 
Prescott. 

"The  characters,  whether  historical  or  fictitious,  are  as 
lifelike  and  natural  as  if  drawn  from  personal  acquaintance. 
He  chiefly  delights  and  excels  in  describing  pecul- 
iar people,  like  Baillie  Jarvie,  Dominie  Sampson,  Meg  Mer- 
rilies,  David  Deans,  etc.,  and  also  in  delineating  historical 
characters  with  astonishing  force  and  accuracy. 
Even  when  placing  these  historical  characters  in  imaginary 
situations,  he  adheres  so  carefully  to  all  that  is  known  of 


366  SCOTT 

them  that  the  most  practical  reader  will  own  that  they  would, 
in  all  consistency,  have  acted  in  those  situations  precisely  as 
the  novelist  has  made  them." — A.  S.  G.  Canning. 

"We  cannot  say,  of  course,  that  figures  in  Scott's  pages 
talked  as  he  makes  them  talk,  but  the  reader  feels  sure  that  if 
they  did  not  they  ought  to  have  done  so." — -J.  Dennis. 

11  When  he  comes  to  the  character  of  his  heroes,  he  seizes 
at  once  upon  the  master-passion,  and,  by  two  or  three  leading 
strokes,  stamps  the  man's  history  on  his  face  in  hues  which 
impart  a  meaning  to  the  least  of  his  actions.  ...  By- 
bringing  the  new  in  contact  with  the  old,  men  were  enabled 
to  trace  the  same  bounding  hopes  and  fears,  the  same  hatreds 
and  loves,  the  same  rivalries  and  aspirations,  arrayed  in  dif- 
ferent attire,  developed  under  conflicting  institutions,  which 
now  actuate  them  and  animating  a  social  structure  they  had 
hitherto  vainly  striven  to  piece  together  from  the  dry  inves- 
tigations of  the  lawyer  or  the  tedious  narrative  of  the  histo- 
rian."— -J.  Devey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  [Mr.  Holdenough]  was  a  tall,  thin  man,  with  an  adust 
complexion,  and  the  vivacity  of  his  eye  indicated  some  irasci- 
bility of  temperament.  His  dress  was  brown,  not  black,  and 
over  his  other  vestments  he  wore,  in  honor  of  Calvin,  a  Geneva 
cloak  of  a  blue  color,  which  fell  backward  from  his  shoulders. 
His  grizzled  hair  was  cut  as  short  as  shears  could  perform  the 
feat  and  covered  with  a  black  silk  skull-cap,  which  stuck  so 
close  to  the  head  that  the  two  ears  expanded  from  under  it  as  if 
they  had  been  intended  as  handles  by  which  to  lift  the  whole 
person.  Moreover,  the  worthy  divine  wore  spectacles  and  a 
long,  grizzled,  peaked  beard,  and  he  carried  in  his  hand  a  small 
pocket  Bible  with  silver  clasps." — Woodstock. 

"  Grahame  of  Claverhouse  was  in  the  prime  of  life,  rather  low 
of  stature,  and  slightly,  though  elegantly,  formed  ;  his  gesture, 
language,  and  manners  were  those  of  one  whose  life  had  been 
spent  among  the  noble  and  the  gay.  His  features  exhibited  even 
feminine  regularity.  An  oval  face,  a  straight  and  well-formed 


SCOTT  367 

nose,  dark  hazel  eyes,  a  complexion  just  sufficiently  tinted  with 
brown  to  save  it  from  the  charge  of  effeminacy,  a  short  upper 
lip,  curved  upward  like  that  of  a  Grecian  statue  and  slightly 
shaded  by  small  mustachios  of  light  brown,  joined  to  a  profusion 
of  long  curled  locks  of  the  same  color,  which  fell  down  on  each 
side  of  his  face,  contributed  to  form  such  a  countenance  as 
limners  love  to  paint  and  ladies  to  look  upon." — Old  Mortality. 

"  Formed  in  the  best  proportions  of  her  sex,  Rowena  was  tall  in 
stature,  yet  not  so  much  so  as  to  attract  observation  on  account 
of  her  superior  height.  Her  complexion  was  exquisitely  fair,  but 
the  noble  cast  of  her  head  and  features  prevented  the  insipidity 
which  sometimes  attaches  to  fair  beauties.  Her  clear  blue  eye, 
which  sat  enshrined  beneath  a  graceful  eyebrow  of  brown,  suf- 
ficiently marked  to  give  expression  to  the  forehead,  seemed 
capable  to  kindle  as  well  as  melt,  to  command  as  well  as  to  be- 
seech. If  mildness  were  the  more  natural  expression  of  such  a 
combination  of  features,  it  was  plain  that  in  the  present  instance 
the  exercise  of  habitual  superiority  and  the  reception  of  general 
homage  had  given  to  the  Saxon  lady  a  loftier  character,  which 
mingled  with  and  qualified  that  bestowed  by  nature." — Ivanhoe. 

2.  Realistic  Description — Imaginative  Power. — 

This  quality  is  in  part  the  same  as  the  first  except  that  it  is 
applied  to  things  rather  than  persons.  Scott  himself  was  fully 
conscious  of  his  descriptive  power;  for,  early  in  life,  he  writes 
of  his  boyish  powers  to  a  friend  :  "  But  show  me  an  old  castle 
or  field  of  battle,  and  I  was  at  home  at  once,  filled  it  with  its 
combatants  in  their  proper  costume,  and  overwhelmed  my 
hearers  by  the  enthusiasm  of  my  description." 

"  Everything  appears  before  us  in  its  true  colors,  with  its 
true  light  and  shade  and  true  proportion  and  peopled  with 
figures  so  varied,  so  life-like  and  individual  that,  after  read- 
ing the  novel,  we  cannot  divest  ourselves  of  a  firm  conviction 
of  the  reality  of  persons,  places,  and  events.  So  much  so, 
indeed,  is  this  the  case  with  nearly  all  Scott's  historical  novels 
that,  when  we  afterward  find  in  authentic  history  any  proofs 
of  occasional  incorrectness  or  even  anachronisms  in  these  fie- 


368  SCOTT 

tions,  we  deny  the  evidence  of  our  reason,  and  cannot  be  in- 
duced to  think  that  the  manners,  the  characters,  or  the  events 
could  have  been  otherwise  than  as  the  artist  has  represented 
them."— T.  B.  Shaw. 

"  All  that  portion  of  the  history  of  his  country  that  he  has 
touched  upon  (wide  as  the  scope  is) — the  manners,  the  person- 
ages, the  events,  the  scenery — lives  over  again  in  his  volumes. 
Nothing  is  wanting — the  illusion  is  complete.  There  is  a 
hurtling  in  the  air,  a  trampling  of  feet  upon  the  ground,  as 
these  perfect  representations  of  human  character  or  fanciful 
belief  come  thronging  back  upon  our  imagination. " — Hazlitt. 

"  Nature,  history,  tradition,  life,  everything  and  every 
place,  were  shown  by  this  new  and  vigorous  spirit  to  be  full 
to  overflowing  with  what  had  been,  in  the  dim  eyes  of  former 
soi-disant  geniuses,  only  dry  bones,  but  which,  at  the  touch  of 
this  bold  necromancer,  sprung  up  living  forms  of  the  most 
fascinating  grace.  .  .  .  The  whole  land  seemed  astir 
with  armies,  insurrections,  pageantries  of  love,  and  passages  of 
sorrow,  that  for  twenty  years  kept  the  enraptured  public  in  a 
trance,  as  it  were,  of  one  accumulating  marvel  of  joy.  There 
seemed  no  bounds  to  his  powers  or  to  the  field  of  his  opera- 
tions."—  William  Howitt. 

"  Whatever  age  he  chooses  for  his  story  lives  before  us  :  we 
become  contemporaries  of  all  his  persons  and  sharers  in  all 
their  fortunes.  ...  In  the  vivid  description  of  natural 
scenery,  our  author  is  wholly  without  a  rival.  .  .  .  Every 
gentle  swelling  of  the  ground,  every  gleam  of  the  water, 
every  curve  and  rock  of  the  shore,  all  varieties  of  the  earth, 
from  the  vastest  crag  to  the  soft  grass  of  the  woodland  walk, 
and  all  changes  of  the  heavens  from  '  morn  to  morn,  from  noon 
to  latest  eve  ' — are  placed  before  us  in  his  works  with  a  dis- 
tinctness beyond  that  which  the  painter's  art  can  attain,  while 
we  seem  to  breathe  the  mountain  air,  to  drink  in  the  freshness 
of  the  valleys. " — T.  N.  Talfourd. 

"  He  can  describe  a  battle  with  a  vividness  unequalled  by 


SCOTT  369 

any  poet  since  Homer.  .  .  .  The  homelier  characters 
are  as  much  alive  as  if  they  were  flesh.  .  .  .  He  is  a 
master  of  description  of  commonplace  affairs  and  people." — 
J.  Dennis. 

"  The  manners,  customs,  language,  ideas,  together  with  the 
armor,  dresses,  and  furniture  of  the  period  are  described  with 
a  force  and  accuracy  never  surpassed,  and  perhaps  never 
equalled,  by  any  other  author  in  prose  fiction." — A.  S.  G. 
Canning. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  One  end  of  this  long  and  dusky  apartment  was  entirely  oc- 
cupied by  a  gallery,  which  had  in  ancient  times  served  to  accom- 
modate the  musicians  and  minstrels.  There  was  a  clumsy  stair- 
case at  either  side  of  it,  composed  of  entire  logs  of  a  foot  square  ; 
and  in  each  angle  of  the  ascent  was  placed,  by  way  of  sentinel, 
the  figure  of  a  Norman  foot-soldier,  having  an  open  casque  on  his 
head,  which  displayed  features  as  stern  as  the  painter's  genius 
could  devise.  Their  arms  were  buff-jackets,  or  shirts  of  mail, 
round  bucklers,  with  spikes  in  the  centre,  and  buskins  which 
adorned  and  defended  the  feet  and  ankles  but  left  the  knees  bare. 
These  wooden  warders  held  great  swords  or  maces  in  their  hands, 
like  military  guards  on  duty." — Woodstock. 

"  The  floor  was  composed  of  earth  mixed  with  lime,  trodden 
into  a  hard  substance,  such  as  is  often  employed  in  flooring  our 
modern  barns.  For  about  one-quarter  of  the  length  of  the  apart- 
ment the  floor  was  raised  by  a  step,  and  this  space,  which  was 
called  the  dais,  was  occupied  only  by  the  principal  members  of 
the  family  and  visitors  of  distinction.  For  this  purpose,  a  table 
richly  covered  with  scarlet  cloth  was  placed  transversely  across 
the  platform,  from  the  middle  of  which  ran  the  longer  and  lower 
board,  at  which  the  domestics  and  inferior  persons  fed,  down 
toward  the  bottom  of  the  hall.  The  whole  resembled  the  form  of 
the  letter  T  or  some  of  those  ancient  dinner-tables  which,  ar- 
ranged on  the  same  principles,  may  be  still  seen  in  the  antique 
colleges  of  Oxford  or  Cambridge.  Massive  chairs  and  settles  of 
carved  oak  were  placed  upon  the  dais,  and  over  these  seats  and 
the  more  elevated  table  was  fastened  a  canopy  of  cloth,  which 
served  in  some  degree  to  protect  the  dignitaries  who  occupied 
34 


370  SCOTT 

that  distinguished  station  from  the  weather,  and  especially  from 
the  rain,  which,  in  some  places,  found  its  way  through  the  ill-con- 
structed roof." — Ivanhoe. 

"  The  scene  was  singularly  romantic.  On  the  verge  of  a  wood, 
which  approached  to  within  a  mile  of  the  town  of  Ashby,  was  an 
extensive  meadow  of  the  finest  and  most  beautiful  green  turf,  sur- 
rounded on  one  side  by  the  forest  and  fringed  on  the  other  by 
straggling  oak-trees,  some  of  which  had  grown  to  immense  size. 
The  ground,  as  if  fashioned  on  purpose  for  the  martial  display 
which  was  intended,  sloped  gradually  down  on  all  sides  to  a  level 
bottom,  which  was  enclosed  for  the  lists  with  strong  palisades, 
forming  a  space  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  length  and  about  half  as 
broad.  The  form  of  the  enclosure  was  an  oblong  square,  save 
that  the  corners  were  considerably  rounded-off,  in  order  to  afford 
more  convenience  for  the  spectators.  The  openings  for  the  entry 
of  the  combatants  were  at  the  northern  and  southern  extremities 
of  the  lists,  accessible  by  strong  wooden  gates,  each  wide  enough 
to  admit  two  horsemen  riding  abreast.  At  each  of  these  portals 
were  stationed  two  heralds,  attended  by  six  trumpets,  as  many 
pursuivants,  and  a  strong  body  of  men-at-arms  for  maintaining 
order  and  ascertaining  the  quality  of  the  knights  who  proposed  to 
engage  in  this  martial  game." — Ivanhoe. 


3.  Picturesqueness  —  Scenic  Effect. — While  this 
quality  is  often  found  in  combination  with  the  second,  they 
are  by  no  means  identical.  There  may  be  picturesqueness 
without  vividness  and  vividness  without  picturesqueness.  As 
Prescott  says:  "Scott  was,  in  truth,  master  of  the  pictur- 
esque. He  understood  better  than  any  historian  since  the 
time  of  Livy  how  to  dispose  his  lights  and  shades  so  as  to 
produce  the  most  striking  results.  .  .  .  If  he  wants  the 
passion  and  fire  of  Moore  and  Campbell,  his  pictures  are 
more  true  to  nature  than  those  of  either.  It  ['  The  Lady  of 
the  Lake  ']  seemed  like  the  breathings  of  his  native  pibroch, 
stealing  over  glen  and  mountain,  and  calling  up  all  the  de- 
licious associations  of  rural  solitude." 

"  A  love  of  picturesque,  of  beautiful,  vigorous,  and  grace- 


SCOTT  371 

• 

ful  things,  a  genuine  love  .  .  .  this  is  the  highest  qual- 
ity to  be  discovered  in  him."  —  Carlyle. 

"  Nothing  could  be  more  picturesque  and  animated  than 
the  panorama  of  brilliant  and  highly  colored  mediaeval  life 
thus  made  to  pass  before  us." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  Scott  was  eminently  a  painter  of  words.  The  pictur- 
esque was  his  forte.  Witness  the  magnificent  descriptions  of 
natural  scenery — sunsets,  stormy  seas,  deep  woodland  glades 
— with  which  many  of  his  chapters  open." — W.  F.  Collier. 

"  He  is  in  history  as  he  is  at  Abbotsford,  bent  on  ar- 
ranging points  of  view  and  Gothic  halls.  The  moon  will 
come  well  there  between  the  towers ;  here  is  a  nicely  placed 
breastplate  ;  the  ray  of  light  which  it  throws  back  is  pleasant 
to  see  on  these  old  hangings  ;  suppose  we  took  out  the  feudal 
garments  from  the  wardrobe  and  invited  these  guests  to  a 
masquerade  ?  The  entertainment  would  be  a  fine  one,  in 
accordance  with  their  reminiscences  and  their  aristocratic 
principles.  .  .  .  Moreover,  there  are  ladies  and  young 
girls,  and  we  must  arrange  the  show  so  as  not  to  shock  their 
severe  morality  and  their  delicate  feelings — make  them  weep 
becomingly.  .  .  As  he  has  the  greatest  supply  of  rich 

costumes,  and  the  most  inexhaustible  talent  for  scenic  effect, 
he  makes  all  his  people  get  on  very  pleasantly,  and  composes 
tales  which,  in  truth,  have  only  the  merit  of  fashion,  though 
that  fashion  may  last  a  hundred  years  yet." — Taine. 

"What  picturesqueness  !  from  the  castle  to  the  cottage, 
from  the  religious  zealot  and  the  soldier  of  fortune  to  the 
very  hounds  snuffing  the  odor  of  supper  in  '  Redgauntlet '  ! 
If  he  seldom  or  never  penetrates  into  the  innermost  regions 
of  men,  how  fresh  are  all  his  outside  sketches  !  " — B.  IV. 
Procter. 

Ruskin  has  testified  how  true  was  Scott's  sense  of  color 
and  with  what  fidelity  he  describes  the  scenery  which  was 
familiar  to  him.  Pitt  said  of  "  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Min- 
strel "  that  it  was  the  sort  of  thing  he  might  have  expect- 


372  SCOTT 

ed  in  painting,  but  could  never  have  fancied  capable  of  being 
given  in  poetry.  Mrs.  Landon  calls  Scott  "  the  founder  of 
a  new  school — the  picturesque,"  and  adds:  "  All  his  char- 
acters give  the  idea  of  portraits  rather  than  inventions." 

"It  is  in  the  embellishment  of  his  plots  by  graphic  inci- 
dents as  well  as  in  his  matchless  delineations  of  character  that 
Scott's  powers  as  a  poet  are  most  conspicuous.  He  knew 
how  to  crowd  his  canvas  with  those  lights  and  shades  which 
have  the  effect  of  conveying  the  poej's  creations  with  all  their 
freshness  and  reality  into  the  reader's  heart.  The  picture  of 
delicate  beauty  comforting  giant  strength,  of  the  quiet  repose 
of  nature  disturbed  by  the  shaggy  panoply  of  arms,  of  the 
silence  and  darkness  of  midnight  broken  by  the  war-whoop  of 
the  trooper  or  the  torch  of  the  incendiary — these  and  other 
kindred  points  of  contrast  the  poet  brings  out  with  a  minute 
ness  of  touch  which  sets  up  the  entire  scene  in  all  its  gor- 
geous coloring  before  our  eyes,  while  the  faintest  reverber- 
ation of  the  sounds  echoes  in  the  ear.  .  .  .  Men  saw 
revived  as  in  a  glass  all  the  artistic  features  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  just  as  the  last  vestige  of  them  had  sunk  beneath  the 
tide  of  modern  innovation." — J.  Devey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  she  passed  for  the  third  time  the  kneeling  crusader,  a 
part  of  a  little  and  well-proportioned  hand,  so  beautifully  formed 
as  to  give  the  highest  proportions  of  the  form  to  which  it  be- 
longed, stole  through  the  folds  of  the  gauze,  like  a  moonbeam 
through  the  fleecy  cloud  of  a  summer  night,  and  again  a  rosebud 
lay  at  the  feet  of  the  Knight  of  the  Leopard." — The  Talisman. 

"  At  the  upper  and  eastern  end  of  the  chapel  stood  the  altar, 
behind  which  a  very  rich  curtain  of  Persian  silk,  embroidered 
deeply  with  gold,  covered  a  recess  containing,  unquestionably, 
some  image  or  relic  of  no  ordinary  sanctity,  in  honor  of  whom 
this  singular  place  of  worship  had  been  erected.  Under  the  im- 
pression that  this  must  be  the  case,  the  knight  advanced  to  the 
shrine  and,  kneeling  down  before  it,  repeated  his  devotions  with 


SCOTT  373 

fervency,  during  which  his  attention  was  disturbed  by  the  curtain 
being  suddenly  raised,  or,  rather,  pulled  aside,  how  or  by  whom 
he  saw  not ;  but  in  the  niche  which  was  thus  disclosed  he  beheld 
a  cabinet  of  silver  and  ebony,  with  a  double  folding-door,  the 
whole  formed  into  a  miniature  resembling  a  Gothic  church." — 
The  Talisman. 

"  The  glorious  beams  of  the  rising  sun,  which  poured  from  a 
tabernacle  of  purple  and  golden  clouds,  were  darted  full  on  such 
a  scene  of  natural  romance  and  beauty  as  had  never  before 
greeted  my  eyes.  To  the  left  lay  the  valley,  down  which  the 
Forth  wandered  on  its  easterly  course,  surrounding  the  beautiful 
detached  hill,  with  all  its  garland  of  woods.  On  the  right,  amid 
a  profusion  of  thickets,  knolls  and  crags,  lay  the  head  of  a  broad 
mountain  lake,  lightly  curled  into  tiny  waves  by  the  breath  of 
the  morning  breeze,  each  glittering  into  its  course  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  sunbeams.  High  hills,  rocks,  and  banks  waving 
with  natural  forests  of  birch  and  oak  formed  the  borders  of  this 
enchanting  sheet  of  water  ;  and,  as  their  leaves  rustled  to  the 
wind  and  twinkled  in  the  sun,  gave  to  the  depth  of  solitude  a 
sort  of  life  and  vivacity." — Rob  Roy. 

4.  Vivacity — Animation — Sustained  Vigor. — This 
quality,  while  kindred  to  the  three  already  considered,  is  dis- 
tinct. It  is  found  mainly  in  Scott's  narration,  while  they  are 
found  mainly  in  his  description.  Leslie  Stephen  says  :  "The 
vivacity  of  the  description  —  the  delight  with  which  Scott 
throws  himself  into  the  pursuit  of  his  knick-knacks  and  an- 
tiquarian rubbish  —  has  something  contagious  about  it." 
Dulcken  declares  that  "  when  one  has  said  that  Scott  is  ex- 
ceedingly spirited,  one  has  expressed  the  most  salient  and  the 
finest  of  his  excellencies. ' ' 

"  His  store  of  images  is  so  copious  that  he  never  dwells 
upon  one  long  enough  to  produce  weariness  in  the  reader; 
and,  even  when  he  deals  in  borrowed  or  in  tawdry  wares,  the 
rapidity  of  his  transition  and  the  transient  glance  with  which 
he  is  satisfied  as  to  each,  leave  the  critic  no  time  to  be 
offended,  and  hurry  him  forward  along  with  the  multitude, 


374  SCOTT 

enchanted  with  the  brilliancy  of  the  exhibition. 
His  narrative,  in  this  way,  is  kept  constantly  full  of  life, 
variety,  and  color,  and  is  so  interspersed  with  glowing  de- 
scriptions and  lively  illusions  and  flying  traits  of  sagacity  and 
pathos  as  not  only  to  keep  our  attention  continually  awake 
but  to  afford  a  pleasing  exercise  to  most  of  our  other  facul- 
ties. "—Jeffrey. 

"  The  poet  could  only  supply  his  want  of  abstract  grandeur, 
of  mental  introspection,  of  profound  pathos,  by  thrilling  in- 
cident, by  startling  contrasts  of  situation,  by  grand  scenic 
effects,  by  powerful  delineation  of  character.  .  .  .  It  is 
owing  to  his  success  in  breathing  into  the  martial  relics  of 
chivalry  the  spirit  of  human  life  that  Scott  is  entitled  to  a 
high  place  in  narrative  poetry.  .  .  .  His  heroes  stride 
before  us  with  an  earnestness  rather  than  with  the  sentimen- 
tality which  speaks  the  atmosphere  of  romance." — J.  Drvey. 

"  He  had  no  philosophic  meditativeness,  but  he  knew  how 
to  tell  a  story.  .  .  .  There  is  a  confident  ease  in  his 
way  of  telling  a  story  which  no  other  writer  of  English  fiction 
has  ever  possessed  in  anything  like  the  same  degree.  He  has 
made  history  live." — R.  L.  Stevenson. 

"  Scott's  poetry  abounds  in  vigorous,  rushing  lines,  which 
no  one  familiar  with  them  in  youth  is  likely  to  forget  in  after 
years.  .  .  .  His  genius  was  fed  less  on  meditation  than 
on  action,  and  there  is  a  strength  and  swiftness  of  movement 
in  his  verse  which  carries  the  reader  with  it.  The  author  of 
'  Marmion '  never  fails  for  want  of  vigor,  and  never  loiters  by 
the  way  when  the  plot  requires  that  he  should  move  over  the 
ground  swiftly. ' ' — -J.  Dennis. 

"The  first  quality  of  his  character,  or,  rather,  that  which 
forms  the  basis  of  it,  is  his  energy." — W.  H.  Prescott. 


SCOTT  375 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  '  He  blenches  not !  He  blenches  not ! '  said  Rebecca.  '  I  see 
him  now  ;  he  heads  a  body  of  men  close  under  the  outer  barrier  of 
the  barbican.  They  pull  down  the  piles  and  palisades  ;  they 
hew  down  the  barriers  with  axes.  His  high  black  plume  floats 
abroad  over  the  throng  like  a  raven  over  the  fields  of  the  slain. 
They  have  made  a  breach  in  the  barriers — they  rush  in — they  are 
thrust  back!  Front-de-Bceuf  heads  the  defenders;  I  see  his 
gigantic  form  above  the  press.  They  throng  again  to  the  breech, 
and  the  pass  is  disputed  hand  to  hand  and  man  to  man.  God  of 
Jacob  !  it  is  the  meeting  of  two  fierce  tides — the  conflict  of  two 
oceans  moved  by  adverse  winds.'" — Ivanhoe. 

"  '  I  assure  you,  Colonel,'  said  Waverley,  '  that  you  judge  too 
harshly  of  the  Highlanders.' 

"  '  Not  a  whit,  not  a  whit ;  I  cannot  spare  them  a  jot — I  cannot 
bate  them  an  ace.  Let  them  stay  in  their  own  barren  mountains, 
and  puff  and  swell,  and  hang  their  bonnets  on  the  horns  of  the 
moon,  if  they  have  a  mind  ;  but  what  business  have  they  to 
come  where  people  wear  breeches  and  speak  an  intelligible 
language  ? '  .  .  . 

"  'A  fine  character  you'll  give  of  Scotland  upon  your  return, 
Colonel  Talbot.' 

"  '  Oh  Justice  Shallow,'  said  the  Colonel,  'will  save  me  the 
trouble—"  Barren,  barren— beggars  all,  beggars  all.  Marry, 
good  air " — and  that  only  when  you  are  fairly  out  of  Edin- 
burgh, and  not  yet  come  to  Leith,  as  is  our  case  at  present.'" 
—  Waverley. 

"  '  Nay,  I  cannot  tell  what  to  make  of  you,'  answered  the  chief 
of  Maclvor  ;  'you  are  blown  about  with  every  wind  of  doctrine. 
Here  have  we  gained  a  victory — and  your  behavior  is  praised  by 
every  living  mortal  to  the  skies — and  the  prince  is  eager  to  thank 
you  in  person — and  all  our  beauties  of  the  White  Rose  are  pulling 
caps  for  you — and/0w,  the  preux  chevalier  of  the  day,  are  stoop- 
ing on  your  horse's  neck  like  a  butter-woman  riding  to  market 
and  looking  as  black  as  a  funeral.' 

"  '  I  am  sorry  for  our  poor  Colonel  Gardiner's  death ;  he  was 
once  very  kind  to  me.' 

"  '  Why,  then,  be  sorry  for  five  minutes,  and  then  be  glad  again; 
his  chance  to-day  may  be  ours  to-morrow.  And  what  does  it 


376  SCOTT 

signify  ? — the  next  best  thing  to  victory  is  honorable  death  ;  but 
it  is  a  pis-aller,  and  one  would  rather  a  foe  had  it  than  one's 
self.'  " —  \Vaverley. 

5.  Quiet,  Kindly  Humor— Toleration— Sympathy. 
— "Walter  Scott  is  never  bitter;  he  loves  men  from  the 
bottom  of  his  heart,  excuses  or  tolerates  them ;  does  not 
chastise  vices,  but  unmasks  them,  and  that  not  rudely.  His 
greatest  pleasure  is  to  pursue  at  length^  not,  indeed,  a  vice,  but 
a  hobby  ;  the  mania  for  odds  and  ends  in  an  antiquary,  the 
archaeological  vanity  of  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine,  the  aris- 
tocratic drivel  of  the  Dowager — Lady  Bellenden — that  is,  the 
amusing  exaggeration  of  an  allowable  taste  ;  and  this  without 
anger,  because,  on  the  whole,  these  ridiculous  people  are  es- 
timable and  even  generous.  Even  in  rogues  like  Dirk  Hat- 
teraick,  in  cut-throats  like  Bothwell,  he  allows  some  goodness. 
In  this  critical  refinement  and  in  this  philosophy  he  resembles 
Addison.  ...  A  continuous  archness  throws  its  smile 
over  these  interior  and  genre  pictures,  so  local  and  minute. 
.  .  .  Most  of  these  good  folk  are  comic.  Our  author 
makes  fun  of  them,  brings  out  their  little  deceits,  parsimony, 
fooleries,  vulgarity,  and  the  hundred  thousand  ridiculous 
habits  people  always  contract  in  a  narrow  sphere  of  life. 
.  .  .  By  this  fundamental  honesty  and  broad  humanity, 
he  was  the  Homer  of  modern-citizen  life." — Taine. 

"It  is  this  beneficent  spirit  which*  gives  such  an  air  of 
bonhomie  to  Scott's  humor  throughout  his  works.  He  played 
with  the  foibles  of  his  fellow-beings,  and  presented  them  in 
a  thousand  characteristic  and  whimsical  lights ;  but  the  kind- 
ness and  generosity  of  his  nature  would  not  allow  him  to  be  a 
satirist." — Washington  Irving. 

"  There  is  no  keen  or  cold-blooded  satire,  no  bitterness  of 
heart  or  fierceness  of  resentment  in  any  part  of  his  writings. 
His  love  of  ridicule  is  little  else  than  a  love  of  mirth,  and  sav- 
ours throughout  of  the  joyous  temperament  in  which  it  ap- 


SCOTT  377 

pears  to  have  its  origin  ;  while  the  buoyancy  of  a  raised  and 
poetical  imagination  lifts  him  continually  above  the  region  of 
mere  jollity  and  good-humour,  to  which  a  taste  by  no  means 
nice  or  fastidious  might  otherwise  be  in  danger  of  sinking 
him." — -Jeffrey. 

"  In  dry  humour,  and  in  that  higher  humour  which  skilfully 
blends  the  ludicrous  and  the  pathetic  so  that  it  is  hardly  pos- 
sible to  separate  between  smiles  and  tears,  Scott  is  a  master. 
[He  produces]  creations  that  make  one  laugh  in- 
wardly as  one  reads." — R.  If.  Hutton. 

"And  no  man  has  ever  seen  with  more  genial  vision  that 
mingling  of  noble  qualities  with  abundant  weaknesses  which 
humorists  love,  .  .  .  with  a  luminous  perception  of  every 
man  'ganging  his  ain  gait,'  and  all  the  wonderful  curves  and 
diversities  of  path  through  which  he  does  so,  and  an  amused, 
affectionate  sense  of  the  special  foibles,  broken  bits  of  folly 
and  wisdom,  obstinacies,  prejudices,  absurdities,  which  en- 
velop here  and  there  the  best  heart  and  nature." — Mrs.  Oli- 
phant. 

"  His  heart  was  an  unfailing  fountain,  which  not  merely 
the  distresses  but  the  joys  of  his  fellow -creatures  made  flow 
like  water.  .  .  .  Rarely,  indeed,  is  this  precious  quality 
found  united  with  the  most  exalted  intellect.  .  .  .  He 
had  a  ready  sympathy,  a  word  of  contagious  kindness  or  can- 
did greeting  for  all.  .  .  .  He  did  not  deal  in  sneers. 
*  Sir  Walter,'  said  one  of  his  old  retainers,  'speaks 
to  every  man  as  if  he  were  his  blood-relation.'  His  heart 
overflowed  with  that  charity  which  is  the  life-spring  of  our 
religion." — W.  H.  Prescott. 

"  There  is  a  genial  and,  withal,  sober  manliness  about  him 
which  is  very  noticeable.  Since  his  day  we  have  had  many 
varieties  of  novels,  but  in  this  quality  of  genial  humanity 
Scott  still  stands  unrivalled.  .  .  .  His  genial  healthful- 
ness  preserves  in  him  a  cordial  and  sympathetic  view  of  life. 
Scott  has  dealt  with  every  form  of  human  trag- 


378  SCOTT 

edy,  but  he  has  done  so  with  the  large  and  tolerant  spirit 
of  a  great  master.  .  .  .  Above  all,  he  is  a  great  humor- 
ist. He  is  quick  to  see  the  fun  of  a  situation,  and  his  laugh- 
ter is  Homeric.  It  is  this  element  of  health  in  which  Scott 
stands  supreme,  and  it  is  precisely  this  quality  which  we  most 
need  to-day  in  our  contemporary  fiction  and  poetry.  "- 
W.  J.  Dawson. 

••  What  a  fine,  easy,  natural,  out-of-door  air  his  scenes 
possess  !  What  great  geniality  he  has  !  .  .  Scott  seems 
to  have  had  no  vanity.  He  never  thrusts  himself  into  the 
narrative.  .  .  .  His  books  are  an  evidence  of  an  able, 
well-balanced  mind." — B.  W.  Procter. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  '  Truly,'  said  Wamba,  without  stirring  from  the  spot,  '  I  have 
consulted  my  legs  upon  this  matter,  and  they  are  altogether  of 
opinion  that  to  carry  my  gay  garments  through  these  sloughs 
would  be  an  act  of  unfriendship  to  my  sovereign  person  and 
royal  wardrobe ;  wherefore,  Gurth,  I  advise  thee  to  call  off 
Fangs  and  leave  the  herd  to  their  destiny,  which,  whether  they 
meet  with  bands  of  travelling  soldiers,  or  of  outlaws,  or  of  wan- 
dering pilgrims,  can  be  little  else  than  to  be  converted  into  Nor- 
mans before  morning,  to  thy  no  small  ease  and  comfort.'  " — 
Ivanhoe. 

"  I  must  do  Balmawhapple,  however,  the  justice  to  say  that 
he  not  only  kept  the  rear  of  his  troops,  and  labored  to  maintain 
some  order  among  them,  but,  in  the  height  of  his  gallantry,  an- 
swered the  fire  of  the  castle  by  discharging  one  of  his  horse-pis- 
tols at  the  battlements  ;  although,  the  distance  being  nearly  half 
a  mile,  I  could  never  learn  that  this  measure  of  retaliation  svas 
attended  with  any  particular  effect." — Waverley. 

"  Inglewood  was,  according  to  her  description,  a  whitewashed 
Jacobite  ;  that  is,  one  who,  having  been  long  a  non-juror,  like 
most  of  the  other  gentlemen  of  the  country,  had  lately  qualified 
himself  to  act  as  justice  by  taking  the  oaths  to  Government — and 
this  inactivity  does  not  by  any  means  arise  from  actual  stupidity. 
On  the  contrary,  for  one  whose  principal  delight  is  in  eating  and 
drinking,  he  is  an  alert,  joyous,  and  lively  old  soul,  which  makes 


SCOTT  379 

his  assumed  dulness  the  more  diverting.  So  you  may  see  Jobson 
on  such  occasions  like  a  bit  of  broken-down  bloodlet,  con- 
demned to  drag  an  overloaded  cart,  puffing,  strutting,  and  splut- 
tering, to  get  the  Justice  put  in  motion,  though  while  the  wheels 
groan,  creak,  and  revolve  slowly,  the  great  and  preponderating 
weight  of  the  vehicle  fairly  frustrates  the  efforts  of  the  willing 
quadruped,  and  prevents  its  being  brought  into  a  state  of  actual 
progression." — Rob  Roy. 

6.  Excessive  Detail — Diffuseness. — "He  is  elabor- 
ately minute  in  the  specification  of  the  dress  and  equipage  of 
his  heroes ;  he  will  suspend  his  narrative  until  he  has  settled 
the  martlets  on  their  shields  and  told  us  whether  the  field  of 
their  escutcheons  is  argent  ord'or.  .  .  .  Scott's  pains- 
taking description  of  articles  of  attire,  which  occasionally  has 
the  air  of  an  inventory,  though  frequently  censured,  was  to 
some  extent  necessary,  in  order  to  impart  an  appearance  of 
reality  to  those  few  touches  on  which  he  relied  for  breathing 
animation  into  figures  decorated  with  so  much  skill. 
The  truth  is,  Scott  wrote  about  no  subject  in  which  his  heart 
was  not  profoundly  interested,  or  with  the  details  of  which  he 
was  not  perfectly  familiar.  This  is  the  real  secret  of  his  suc- 
cess. .  .  .  And  this  was  done  with  a  brilliancy  of  effect, 
with  a  splendor  of  coloring,  with  a  fidelity  to  nature,  down  to 
the  most  minute  detail,  which  has  never  been  surpassed  ;  with 
a  truthful  accuracy  which  simulated  life  in  every  degree  of 
rank,  and  which  may  be  said  to  have  generalized  history." — 
J.  Devey. 

' '  The  antique  relics,  the  curious  works  of  art,  the  hangings 
and  furniture,  even,  with  which  his  halls  are  decorated,  were 
specially  contrived  and  selected  by  him  ;  and  to  read  his  let- 
ters at  this  time  [when  he  was  writing  his  novels]  to  his  friend 
Terry,  one  might  fancy  himself  perusing  the  correspondence 
of  an  upholsterer,  so  exact  and  technical  is  he  in  his  instruc- 
tions."—  W.  H.  Prescott. 

"Scott  bestows  an  apparently  disproportionate  amount  of 


380  SCOTT 

imagination  upon  the  mere  scene-painting,  the  external  trap- 
pings, the  clothes  or  dwelling-places  of  his  performers.  A 
traveller  into  a  strange  country  naturally  gives  us  the  ex- 
ternal peculiarities  which  strike  him.  Scott  has  to  tell  us 
what  completed  the  costume  of  his  Highland  chiefs  or  medi- 
aeval barons.  .  .  .  He  fairly  carried  away  the  hearts  of 
his  contemporaries  by  a  lavish  display  of  mediaeval  uphol- 
stery."— Leslie  Stephen. 

1 '  His  faults  may  be  summed  up  thus  :  frequent  carelessness 
of  language ;  occasional  quaintness  of  thought ;  a  trick  of  in- 
troducing learned  terms  into  conversation,  and,  as  with  Baron 
Bradwardine  and  Jonathan  Oldbuck,  pursuing  the  humors  of 
an  odd  character  to  a  wearisome  length ;  .  .  .  occasional 
repetition  of  himself,  and  an  overloading  of  his  page  with  an- 
tiquarian details." — George  Gilfillan. 

"  He  is  terribly  long  and  diffuse;  his  conversations  are  in- 
terminable ;  he  is  determined,  at  all  events,  to  fill  three  vol- 
umes."— Taine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  recesses  within  them  were  raised  a  step  or  two  from  the 
wall  In  one  was  placed  a  walnut-tree  reading-desk  and  a  huge 
stuffed  arm-chair,  covered  with  Spanish  leather.  A  little  cabinet 
stood  beside,  with  some  of  its  shuttles  and  drawers  open,  display- 
ing hawk's-bills,  dog-whistles,  instruments  for  trimming  falcons' 
feathers,  bridle-bits  of  various  construction,  and  other  trifles 
connected  with  sylvan  sport." — Woodstock. 

"The  human  figures  which  completed  this  landscape  were,  in 
number,two,  partaking,  in  their  dress  and  appearance,  of  that  wild 
and  rustic  character  which  belonged  to  the  woodlands  of  the  West 
Riding  of  Yorkshire  at  that  early  period.  The  eldest  of  these 
men  had  a  stern,  savage,  and  wild  aspect.  His  garments  were  of 
the  simplest  form  imaginable,  being  a  close  jacket  with  sleeves, 
composed  of  the  tanned  skin  of  some  animal,  on  which  the  hair 
had  been  originally  left,  but  which  had  been  worn  off  in  so  many 
places  that  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  distinguish,  from  the 
patches  that  remained,  to  what  creature  the  fur  had  belonged. 
This  primeval  vestment  reached  from  the  throat  to  the  knees,  and 


SCOTT  38! 

served  at  once  all  the  usual  purposes  of  body-clothing.  There 
was  no  wider  opening  at  the  collar  than  was  necessary  to  admit 
the  passage  of  the  head,  from  which  it  may  be  inferred  that  it  was 
put  on  by  slipping  it  on  over  the  head  and  shoulders,  in  the  man- 
ner of  a  modern  shirt  or  ancient  hauberk.  Sandals,  bound  with 
thongs  made  of  boar's-hide,  protected  the  feet,  and  a  roll  of  thin 
leather  was  twined  artificially  around  the  legs,  and,  ascending 
above  the  calf,  left  the  knees  bare,  like  those  of  a  Scottish  High- 
lander. To  make  the  jacket  sit  yet  more  close  to  the  body,  it  was 
gathered  at  the  middle  by  a  broad  leathern  belt  secured  by  a 
brass  buckle,  to  one  side  of  which  was  attached  a  sort  of  scrip, 
and  to  the  other  a  ram's  horn,  accoutred  with  a  mouth-piece,  for 
the  purpose  of  blowing,  etc." — Ivanhoe. 

"  The  livery  cupboards  were  loaded  with  plate  of  the  richest 
description  and  the  most  varied ;  some  articles  tasteful,  some 
perhaps  grotesque  in  the  invention  and  decoration,  but  all  gorge- 
ously magnificent,  both  from  the  richness  of  the  work  and  value 
of  the  materials.  Thus,  the  chief  table  was  adorned  by  a  salt 
ship-fashion  made  of  mother-of-pearl,  garnished  with  silver  and 
divers  warlike  ensigns  and  other  ornaments,  anchors,  sails,  and 
sixteen  pieces  of  ordnance.  It  bore  a  figure  of  Fortune,  placed 
on  a  globe,  with  a  flag  in  her  hand.  Another  salt  was  fashioned 
of  silver,  in  form  of  a  swan  in  full  sail.  That  chivalry  might  not 
be  outwitted  amid  this  splendor,  a  silver  Saint  George  was  pre- 
sented, mounted,  and  equipped  in  the  usual  fashion  in  which  he 
bestrides  the  dragon.  The  figures  were  moulded  to  be  in  some 
sort  useful.  The  horse's  tail  was  managed  to  hold  a  case  of 
knives,  while  the  breast  of  the  dragon  presented  a  similar  accom- 
modation for  oyster-knives." — Kenilworth. 


7.  False  Antiquarianism — Anachronism. — "Scott 
knew  the  Middle  Ages  perhaps  better  than  any  other  man  of 
his  time;  but  he  did  not  know  them  as  they  are  known 
now ;  and  an  antiquary  would  pick  many  holes  in  his  cos- 
tume. His  baronial  mansion  at  Abbotsford  was  bastard 
Gothic,  and  so  are  many  details  of  his  poems." — Goldwin 
Smith. 

"  From  Walter  Scott  we  learned  history  ;  and  yet  is  this 


382  SCOTT 

history  ?  All  these  pictures  of  a  distant  age  are  false.  Cos- 
tumes, scenery,  externals  alone  are  exact ;  actions,  speech, 
sentiments,  all  the  rest — is  civilized,  embellished,  arranged  in 
modern  guise.  We  might  suspect  it  when  looking  at  the 
character  and  modern  life  of  the  author  ;  for  what  does  he 
desire  ?  And  what  do  the  guests  eager  to  hear  him  demand  ? 
Is  he  a  lover  of  truth  as  it  is,  foul  and  fierce  ?  An  inquisitive 
explorer,  indifferent  to  contemporary  applause,  bent  alone  on 
defining  the  transformations  of  living  nature  ?  By  no  means. 
He  is  in  history  as  he  is  at  Abbotsford,  bent  on  arranging 
points  of  view  and  Gothic  halls.  .  .  .  Walter  Scott 
pauses  on  the  threshold  of  the  soul  and  in  the  vestibule  of 
history,  selects  in  the  Renaissance  and  the  Middle  Ages  only 
the  fit  and  agreeable,  blots  out  plain-spoken  words,  licentious 
sensuality,  bestial  ferocity.  After  all,  his  characters,  to  what- 
ever age  he  transports  them,  are  his  neighbors — '  cannie ' 
farmers,  vain  lairds,  gloved  gentlemen,  marriageable  ladies, 
all  more  or  less  commonplace,  that  is,  steady  ;  by  their  edu- 
cation and  character  at  a  great  distance  from  the  voluptuous 
fools  of  the  Restoration  or  the  heroic  brutes  and  fierce  beasts 
of  the  Middle  Ages." — Taine. 

"  What  did  Scott  care  for  a  few  anachronisms  that  would 
be  the  ruin  of  one  of  our  contemporaries?  He  thought  noth- 
ing of  confusing  all  the  dates  about  Shakespeare  in  his  'Wood- 
stock ' — and  the  list  of  his  sins  in  this  respect  might  be  made 
a  long  one." — 7!  6".  Perry. 

"  Many  inaccuracies  of  fact  might  be  pointed  out  in  them 
[Scott's  historical  novels].  His  study  of  the  character  of 
James  I.  in  '  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel '  is  in  several  respects  en- 
tirely mistaken.  His  description  of  a  euphuist  in  '  The  Mon- 
astery '  bears  no  resemblance  whatever  to  the  followers  of 
John  Lyly." — Bayard  Tuckerman. 

"  The  murder  of  Amy  Robsart  is  placed  in  the  same  year 
with  Leicester's  magnificent  revel  at  Kenihvorth  in  Elizabeth's 
honor.  It  was,  in  fact,  long  before.  .  .  .  Scott  connects 


SCOTT  383 

Lady  Derby  with  the  Papist  plot,  though  she  had  been  dead 
many  years,  and  was  no  Roman  Catholic,  but  a  member  of 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  Huguenot  families  of  France." 
— C.  D.  Yonge. 

"The  sfudy  of  antiquarian  lore  became  a  necessity  of 
Scott's  being.  He  read  up  old  churches,  devoured  legendary 
tales,  tracked  to  its  source  every  heraldic  distinction,  and 
studied  feudal  customs  until  chivalry  became  to  him  the  only 
real  thing  in  the  world  which  had  any  meaning. 
He  could  sing  only  of  ancient  feuds,  of  magical  enchantments, 
of  mailed  knights  bent  upon  feats  of  war  or  gallantry,  of  gen- 
tle dames  and  cowled  priests  crossing  each  other's  paths  in 
the  intrigues  of  love  and  statecraft,  of  errant  damsels  in 
moated  castles  perplexed  by  the  claims  of  rival  chieftains. 
In  intermingling  weird  superstitions  with  his  narrative,  Scott 
was  true  to  the  character  of  the  times  he  was  endeavoring  to 
depict ;  but  in  confounding  these  with  the  whole  machinery 
of  the  supernatural  then  existing,  the  poet  committed  an  error, 
which  should  not  be  overlooked  in  any  fair  estimate  of  his 
powers.  .  .  .  When  he  sacrifices  that  broad  spirit  of 
Christianity  permeating  all  the  institutions  of  chivalry  to  a 
few  wild  legends,  he  dwarfs  the  leading  element  of  the  age 
and  substitutes  an  excrescence.  .  .  .  Of  the  abysmal 
depths  of  religious  feeling,  and  of  the  deeper  mysteries  of  the 
human  heart,  he  knew  very  little  and  discoursed  less.  In  not 
diving  beneath  the  surface,  in  giving  us  a  mere  travesty  of  the 
external  embodiment  in  which  this  intensity  of  religious  feeling 
had  enwrapped  itself,  Scott  so  far  was  untrue  to  the  spirit  of 
the  age  he  would  represent.  .  .  .  The  individual  scenes 
are  so  artistically  finished,  the  minor  incidents  are  so  elab- 
orated, that  we  lose  sight  of  the  incongruities  marring  the 
framework  of  the  design  in  the  lavish  shower  of  beauties  flung 
with  reckless  profusion  at  our  feet."— -J.  Devey. 

Sufficient  indications  of  this  characteristic  have  been  given 
in  the  critical  quotations. 


384  SCOTT 

8.  Romanticism. — "Wordsworth  turned  from  the  Ti- 
tanic confusion  of  the  French  Revolution  to  the  study  of 
nature;  Scott  to  the  study  of  the  romantic  past.  ...  It 
was  the  splendor  of  the  past  rather  than  the  thrilling  strug- 
gles of  the  present  which  fascinated  his  imagination.  .  .  . 
From  childhood,  his  memory  had  been  stored  with  fantastic 
relics  of  a  legendary  past.  Old  snatches  of  ballad  poetry, 
curious  stories  of  second-sight,  all  the  odds  and  ends  which 
the  literary  antiquary  loves  and  cherishes,  were  the  natural 
heritage  of  Scott.  The  grotesque,  the  heroic,  the  romantic, 
were  the  diet  on  which  his  imagination  had  been  fed.  .  .  . 
He  rekindled  the  love  of  chivalry,  the  old  admiration  of  the 
troubadour,  in  the  English  heart." — W.  J.  Dawson. 

"  He  obeyed  an  easy  and  fertile  inspiration,  independent 
of  passing  questions,  a  stranger  to  the  struggles  of  the  time, 
loving  past  ages,  whose  ruins  he  frequented  and  whose  spirits 
he  invoked,  searching  out  every  tradition  to  revive  and  re- 
juvenate it." — Sainte-Beuve. 

"  Diving  into  the  human  heart,  Scott  discovered  the  secret 
of  gratifying  taste  by  the  mysterious.  .  .  .  His  love  for 
the  mysterious  led  him  early  to  haunt  ruined  castles  and  to 
repeople  them  with  the  phantoms  of  their  past  existence. 
That  the  poet  has  raised  the  ghost  of  chivalry  from  the  tomb 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  interest  the  public  in  its  lineaments,  is 
sufficiently  evident  from  the  popularity  which  his  works  still 
command." — J.  Devey. 

"  A  feeling  of  superstition  seemed  to  hover  about  Scott's 
mind  like  some  strange,  mysterious  dream,  giving  a  roman- 
tic coloring  to  his  conversation  and  his  writings." — W.  H. 
Prescott. 

"  With  Scott,  the  romantic  movement,  the  movement  of  an 
extended  curiosity  and  enfranchised  imagination,  has  begun." 
— R.  L.  Stevenson. 


SCOTT  385 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Attended  by  this  gallant  equipage,  himself  well  mounted  and 
splendidly  dressed  in  crimson  and  gold,  bearing  upon  his  hand 
a  falcon,  and  having  his  head  covered  by  a  rich  fur  bonnet 
adorned  with  a  circle  of  precious  stones,  from  which  his  long, 
curled  hair  escaped  and  overspread  his  shoulders,  Prince  John, 
upon  a  gray  and  high-mettled  palfrey,  caracoled  within  the  lists 
at  the  head  of  his  jovial  party,  laughing  loud  with  his  train,  and 
eying  with  all  the  boldness  of  royal  criticism  the  beauties  who 
adorned  the  lofty  galleries." — Ivanhoe. 

"  Gradually  the  galleries  became  filled  with  knights  and  nobles 
in  their  robes  of  peace,  whose  long  and  rich-tinted  mantles  were 
contrasted  with  the  gayer  and  more  splendid  habits  of  the  ladies, 
who,  in  a  greater  proportion  than  even  the  men  themselves, 
thronged  to  witness  a  sport  which  one  would  have  thought  too 
bloody  and  dangerous  to  afford  their  sex  much  pleasure.  The 
lower  and  interior  space  was  soon  filled  by  substantial  yeomen 
and  burghers,  and  such  of  lesser  gentry  as,  from  modesty,  pov- 
erty, or  dubious  title,  durst  not  assume  any  higher  place." — 
Ivanhoe. 

"  A  spectre  may,  indeed,  here  and  there  still  be  seen  of  an  old, 
gray-headed  and  gray-bearded  Highlander  with  war-worn  feat- 
ures, but  bent  double  by  age,  dressed  in  an  old-fashioned  cocked- 
hat,  bound  with  white  tape  instead  of  silver  lace  ;  and  in  coat, 
waistcoat,  and  breeches  of  a  muddy-colored  red,  bearing  in  his 
withered  hand  an  ancient  weapon  called  a  Lochaber  axe — such 
a  phantom  of  former  days  still  creeps,  I  am  informed,  about  the 
statue  of  Charles  the  Second." — Heart  of  Midlothian. 

9.  Patriotism. — Scott,  even  more  than  Burns,  has  made 
almost  every  district  of  Scotland  classic  ground.  His  spirit 
and  his  memory  pervade  every  scene.  The  number  of  visitors 
to  Scotland  from  foreign  lands  is  an  annual  testimony  to  the 
literary  as  well  as  religious  truth,  "The  things  which  are 
unseen  are  eternal."  This  quality  did  not  appear  in  his 
earlier  writings  so  clearly  and  fairly  as  in  his  novels,  for 
Jeffrey  wrote,  when  "  Marmion  "  first  appeared  :  "There  is 
25 


386  SCOTT 

scarcely  one  trait  of  true  Scottish  nationality  or  patriotism 
introduced  into  the  whole  poem."  But  the  following  years 
abundantly  reversed  this  verdict  on  Scott's  work  as  a  whole. 
John  Dennis  says  :  "  No  man  of  letters  ever  did  so  much  for 
his  country.  .  .  .  He  removed  the  antagonism  that  had 
always  existed  between  the  Lowlander  and  the  Highlander. 
Indeed,  the  Scotland  we  know  may  almost  be  called  his 
creation.  .  .  .  The  love  of  country  animated  all  Scott's 
life  and  inspired  all  his  best  work."v 

"  He  idolized  the  wild  scenery  of  his  native  country,  and 
has  described  it  in  imperishable  language."— -J.  Devey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  No,  Cleveland  ;  my  own  rude  country  has  charms  for  me, 
even  desolate  as  you  think  it,  and  depressed  as  it  surely  is,  which 
no  other  land  on  earth  can  present  to  me.  I  endeavor  in  vain  to 
represent  to  myself  those  visions  of  trees  and  of  groves  which  my 
eye  never  saw,  but  my  imagination  can  conceive  no  sight  in  nat- 
ure more  sublime  than  those  waves  when  agitated  by  a  storm,  or 
more  beautiful  than  when  they  come,  as  they  do  now,  rolling  in  a 
calm  tranquillity  to  the  shore.  Not  the  fairest  scene  in  a  foreign 
land,  not  the  brightest  sunbeam  that  ever  shone  upon  the  rich- 
est landscape,  would  win  my  thoughts  for  a  moment  from  that 
lofty  rock,  misty  hill,  and  wide-rolling  ocean.  Hialtland  is  the 
land  of  my  deceased  ancestors  and  of  my  living  father ;  and  in 
Hialtland  will  I  live  and  die."—  The  Pirate. 

"  '  Let  us  have  his  company,  by  all  means,'  answered  my  com- 
panion. '  I  respect  the  Scotch,  sir  ;  I  love  and  honor  the  nation 
for  their  sense  of  morality.  Men  talk  of  their  filth  and  poverty  ; 
but  commend  me  to  sterling  honesty,  though  clad  in  rags,  as  the 
poet  saith.  I  have  been  credibly  assured,  sir,  by  men  on  whom 
I  can  depend,  that  there  was  never  known  such  a  thing  in  Scot- 
land as  highway  robbery.'  " — Rob  Roy. 

"  '  You  do  not  know  the  genius  of  that  man's  country,  sir,' 
answered  Rashleigh  ;  '  discretion,  prudence,  and  foresight  are 
their  leading  qualities  ;  these  are  only  modified  by  a  narrow- 
spirited  but  yet  ardent  patriotism,  which  forms,  as  it  were,  the  out- 
most of  the  concentric  bulwarks  with  which  a  Scotchman  fortifies 


SCOTT  387 

himself  against  all  the  attacks  of  a  generous  philanthropical  prin- 
ciple. Surmount  this  mound,  you  find  an  inner  and  still  dearer 
barrier — the  love  of  his  province,  his  village,  or  most  probably  his 
clan  ;  storm  this  second  obstacle,  you  have  a  third — his  attach- 
ment to  his  own  family — his  father,  mother,  sons,  daughters, 
uncles,  aunts,  and  cousins,  to  the  ninth  generation.'  " — Rob  Roy. 

10.  High  Moral  Tone — Reverence. — Dean  Stanley 
speaks  justly  of  "  the  profound  reverence,  the  lofty  sense  of 
Christian  honor,  purity,  and  justice  that  breathe  through 
every  volume  of  the  romances  of  Walter  Scott." 

"  True  virtue  and  religion  are  always  reverently  treated  by 
him  ;  and  if  he  laughs  at  the  eccentricities  and  quaint  expres- 
sions of  a  Puritan  or  a  Covenanter,  he  never  despises  a  man." 
— -J.  Dennis. 

"  There  is  no  man  that  we  now  recall,  of  historical  celeb- 
rity, who  combined  in  so  eminent  a  degree  the  highest 
qualities  of  the  moral,  the  intellectual,  and  the  physical." — 
W.  H.  Prescott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Go  to  the  king  himself ;  speak,  speak  to  him,  as  the  servants  of 
God  have  a  right  to  speak  even  to  earthly  sovereigns.  Point  out 
to  him  the  folly  and  the  wickedness  of  the  course  he  is  about  to 
pursue  ;  urge  upon  him  that  he  fear  the  sword,  since  wrath 
bringeth  the  punishment  of  the  sword.  Tell  him  that  the  friends 
that  died  for  him  in  the  fields  of  Worcester,  on  the  scaffolds  and 
on  the  gibbets,  since  that  bloody  day — that  the  remnant,  who  are 
in  prison,  scattered,  fled,  and  ruined  on  his  account — deserve 
better  of  him  and  of  his  father's  race  than  that  he  should  throw 
away  his  life  in  an  idle  brawl ;  tell  him  that  it  is  dishonest  to 
venture  that  which  is  not  his  own,  dishonorable  to  betray  the 
trust  which  brave  men  have  reposed  in  his  virtue  and  in  his 
courage." —  Woodstock. 

"The  sincere  and  earnest  approach  of  the  Christian  to  the 
throne  of  the  Almighty  teaches  the  best  lesson  of  patience  under 
affliction.  Since  wherefore  should  we  mock  the  Creator  with  sup- 


388  SCOTT 

plications,   when   we  insult  Him  by  murmuring  under  His   de- 
crees? " —  The  Talisman. 

"  The  clergyman  had  reminded  them  that  the  next  congrega- 
tion they  must  join  would  be  that  of  the  just  or  the  unjust ;  that 
the  psalms  they  now  heard  must  be  exchanged,  in  the  space  of 
two  brief  days,  for  eternal  hallelujahs  or  eternal  lamentations  ; 
and  that  this  fearful  alternative  must  depend  upon  the  state  to 
which  they  might  be  able  to  bring  their  minds  before  the  moment 
of  awful  preparation  ;  that  they  should  not  despair  on  account  of 
the  suddenness  of  the  summons,  but  rather  feel  this  comfort  in 
their  misery,  that,  though  all  who  now  lifted  their  voices  or  bent 
the  knee  in, conjunction  with  them  lay  under  the  same  sentence 
of  certain  death,  they  only  had  the  advantage  of  knowing  the 
precise  moment  at  which  it  would  be  executed  upon  them. 
'  Therefore,'  urged  the  good  man,  his  voice  trembling  with  emo- 
tion, '  redeem  the  time,  my  unhappy  brethren,  which  is  yet  left, 
and  remember  that,  with  the  grace  of  Him  to  whom  space  and 
time  are  but  as  nothing,  salvation  may  yet  be  assured,  even  in 
the  pittance  of  delay  which  the  laws  of  your  country  afford  yon.'" 
— Heart  of  Midlothian. 

II.  Dramatic  Power. — "He  is  superior  to  any  of  his 
rivals  in  the  creation  of  incidents,  in  the  manipulation  of 
events,  and  in  the  grouping  of  his  characters  with  a  view  to 
secure  that  dramatic  interest  so  necessary  to  the  dramatic  suc- 
cess of  a  narrative  poem." — -J.  Devey. 

' '  Almost  every  appearance  of  Meg  Merrilies  is  a  stage  effect 
as  dramatic  in  situation  as  it  is  in  language.  .  .  .  Pley- 
dell  is  a  comedy  in  himself." — L.  E.  Landon. 

"  I  see  in  no  other  author  such  a  combination  of  truth  and 
ease  and  dramatic  power." — B.  W.Procter. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  '  Repeat  your  defiance  when  I  have  counted  thrice,'  said 
Everard,  '  and  take  the  punishment  of  your  insolence.  Once — 
I  have  cocked  my  pistol.  Twice — I  never  missed  my  aim.  By 
all  that  is  sacred,  I  fire  if  you  do  not  withdraw.  When  I  pro- 
nounce the  next  number,  I  will  shoot  you  dead  where  you  stand. 


SCOTT  389 

I  am  yet  unwilling  to  shed  blood — I  give  you  another  chance  of 
flight.  Once— twice — Thrice!  ' 

"  Everard  aimed  at  the  bosom,  and  discharged  the  pistol.  The 
figure  waved  its  arm  in  an  attitude  of  scorn,  and  a  loud  laugh 
arose,  during  which  the  light,  as  gradually  growing  weaker,  glanced 
and  glimmered  upon  the  apparition  of  the  aged  knight,  and  then 
disappeared.  Everard's  life-blood  ran  cold  to  his  heart.  '  Had 
he  been  of  human  mould,'  he  thought,  '  the  bullet  must  have 
pierced  him ;  but  I  have  neither  will  nor  power  to  fight  with 
supernatural  beings.'  " — Woodstock. 

"  As,  at  the  blast  of  that  last  trumpet,  the  guilty  shall  call  upon 
the  mountains  to  cover  them,  Leicester's  inward  thoughts  invoked 
the  stately  arch  which  he  had  built  in  his  pride  to  burst  its  strong 
conjunction  and  overwhelm  him  in  its  ruins.  But  the  cemented 
stones  stood  fast,  and  it  was  the  proud  master  himself  who,  as  if 
some  actual  pressure  had  bent  him  to  the  earth,  kneeled  down 
before  Elizabeth,  and  prostrated  his  brow  to  the  marble  flag- 
stones on  which  she  stood. 

"' Leicester,' said  Elizabeth,  in  a  voice  which  trembled  with 
passion,  '  could  I  think  thou  hast  practised  on  me  — on  me,  thy 
sovereign — on  me,  thy  confiding,  thy  too-partial  mistress — the 
base  and  ungrateful  deception  which  thy  present  confusion 
surmises — by  all  that  is  holy,  false  lord,  that  head  of  thine  were 
in  as  great  peril  as  ever  was  thy  father's.'" — Kenilworth . 

"  '  I  agree  to  it,  sir  ;  I  agree  to  it,  perfectly,'  said  Morris,  shrink- 
ing back  as  Campbell  moved  his  chair  toward  him  to  fortify 
his  appeal;  'and  I  incline,  sir, '  he  added, 'to  retract  my  in- 
formation as  to  Mr.  Osbaldistone  ;  and  I  request,  sir,  you  will 
permit  him,  sir,  to  go  about  his  business  and  me  to  go  about 
mine,  also  ;  your  worship  may  have  business  to  settle  with  Mr. 
Campbell,  and  I  am  rather  in  haste  to  be  gone.'  '  Then,  there 
go  the  declarations,'  said  the  Justice,  throwing  them  into  the  fire; 
'  and  now  you  are  at  perfect  liberty,  Mr.  Osbaldistone.  And 
you,  Mr.  Morris,  are  set  quite  at  ease.' 

"  'Ay,'  said  Campbell,  eying  Morris  as  he  assented  with  a 
rueful  grin  to  the  Justice's  observations,  much  like  the  ease  of  a 
toad  under  a  pair  of  harrows.  '  But  fear  nothing,  Mr.  Morris  ; 
you  and  I  maun  leave  the  house  together.'  With  such  a  linger- 
ing look  of  terror  as  the  condemned  criminal  throws  when  he  is 


390  SCOTT 

informed  that  the  cart  awaits  him,  Morris  arose  ;  but,  when  on  his 
legs,  appeared  to  hesitate.  '  I  tell  thee,  man,  fear  nothing,'  re- 
iterated Campbell ;  '  I  will  keep  my  word  with  you.  Bid  the 
Justice  farewell,  man,  and  show  your  Southern  breeding.' 

"  Morris,  thus  exhorted  and  encouraged,  took  his  leave,  under 
the  escort  of  Mr.  Campbell ;  but  apparently  new  scruples  and  ter- 
rors struck  him  before  they  left  the  house,  for  I  heard  Campbell 
reiterating  assurances  of  safety  and  protection  as  they  left  the 
ante-room." — Rob  Roy. 

"  On  the  lower  step  of  this  throne,vthe  champion  was  made  to 
kneel  down.  And  it  was  observed  that  he  tottered  as  they  guided 
him  the  second  time  across  the  lists.  Rowena,  descending  with 
a  graceful  and  dignified  step,  was  about  to  place  the  chaplet 
which  she  held  in  her  hand  upon  the  helmet  of  the  champion, 
when  the  marshals  exclaimed,  with  one  voice,  '  It  must  not  be 
thus — his  head  must  be  bare  ! '  "  — Ivanhoe. 


DE  QUINCEY,  1785-1859. 

Biographical  Outline. — Thomas  De  Quincey,  born  at 
Greenheys,  Manchester,  August  15,  1785;  father  a  merchant 
of  some  literary  reputation  and  culture,  a  contributor  to  the 
Gentleman's  Magazine;  De  Quincey's  father  dies  in  1792, 
leaving  an  income  of  ^1,600  a  year  to  De  Quincey  and  his 
five  brothers  and  sisters ;  the  death  of  three  sisters,  before  he 
was  six  years  old,  had  made  a  profound  impression  on  him, 
which  is  recorded  in  his  "  Autobiographic  Sketches"  ;  he  is 
first  taught  by  his  guardian,  the  Rev.  Samuel  Hall,  at  Salford, 
and  rejoices  at  the  absence  of  his  brother  William  at  a  board- 
ing-school, leaving  the  sensitive  Thomas  to  be  surround- 
ed by  his  sisters  and  not  by  "horrid,  pugilistic  brothers" ; 
De  Quincey  is  precocious ;  he  enters  the  school  of  Dr.  Mor- 
gan, at  Bath,  in  1796,  accompanied  by  his  brother  Richard 
("  Pink  ")  ;  at  Bath  he  attracts  attention  by  his  skill  in  Latin 
and  Greek,  writing  the  latter  language  easily  when  thirteen, 
and  conversing  in  it  fluently  when  fifteen ;  he  is  removed 
from  Bath  because  of  illness,  due  to  a  blow  on  the  head  by  an 
usher;  after  a  period  of  seclusion  with  his  mother  ("  to  sub- 
due his  intellectual  vanity"),  he  enters  a  school  at  Winkfield, 
Wiltshire,  more  religious  than  thorough ;  while  at  Wiltshire 
he  aids  in  publishing  a  school-paper  called  The  Observer ;  he 
visits  his  friend  Lord  Westport  at  Eton  and  also  Lord  West- 
port's  family  in  Ireland  ;  visits,  also,  the  family  of  Lord  Car- 
berry,  in  Northamptonshire,  where  Lady  Carberry  has  much 
influence  over  him ;  he  enters  the  Manchester  Grammar  - 
School  in  1801,  hoping  to  remain  three  years  and  thus  to 
gain  an  "  exhibition  "  of  forty  guineas,  which,  with  his  allow- 


392  DE   QUINCEY 

ance  of  ^150  a  year,  would  carry  him  through  Oxford;  at 
Manchester,  DeQuincey's  liver  becomes  torpid  through  lack  of 
exercise  and  unwise  drugging;  he  becomes  wretched  and  begs 
his  guardians  to  remove  him,  but  they  refuse ;  he  borrows  ten 
guineas  from  Lady  Carberry  (then  visiting  at  Manchester)  and 
runs  away  in  July,  1802  ;  he  walks  to  Chester,  meets  an  uncle, 
and  is  permitted  to  proceed  to  Wales,  with  an  allowance  of  a 
guinea  a  week ;  he  wanders  among  the  Welsh  mountains, 
learns  German,  and  partly  makes  his  living  by  writing  letters 
for  the  peasantry ;  feeling  the  need  of  books  and  educated 
companions,  he  goes  to  London,  and  tries  in  vain  to  secure  a 
loan  of  £200  with  which  to  support  himself  till  attaining  his 
majority ;  he  is  put  off  by  money-lenders,  is  reduced  almost 
to  starvation,  sleeps  in  a  deserted  house  in  Soho  with  a  neg- 
lected child  for  his  companion,  and  wanders  about  London 
during  the  day ;  at  one  time  he  is  saved  from  a  fainting-fit  by 
the  generosity  of  an  outcast  woman,  immortalized  in  his  auto- 
biography under  the  name  of  "Ann"  ;  eventually  he  be- 
comes reconciled  with  his  friends,  and  enters  Worcester  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  with  an  allowance  of  ^100  a  year  ;  he  is  quiet 
and  studious  at  Oxford,  and  distinguishes  himself  in  Latin, 
but  he  never  takes  a  degree,  partly  because  he  despised  the 
examination -system  and  partly  out  of  diffidence  as  to  oral  tests 
(he  insisted  on  answering  questions  about  Greek  in  Greek)  ; 
while  at  Oxford  he  suffers  from  a  violent  toothache,  and,  at 
the  advice  of  student  friends,  takes  laudanum  for  relief,  thus 
beginning  his  use  of  opium ;  in  1803  he  had  begun  a  corre- 
spondence with  Wordsworth,  whom  he  greatly  admired  ;  he 
meets  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey  in  1807,  accompanies  Cole- 
ridge's family  to  Grasmere,  where  he  meets  Wordsworth  and 
Southey,  and,  on  returning,  aids  Coleridge  by  lending  him, 
anonymously,  through  Cottle,  the  bookseller,  ^300 ;  De 
Quincey  is  again  at  Oxford  early  in  1808  ;  he  goes  thence  to 
London,  where  he  meets  Davy,  Lamb,  and  others,  and  studies 
law  in  a  desultory  way  at  the  Middle  Temple ;  he  visits 


DE   QUINCEY  393 

Wordsworth  at  Grasmere  early  in  1809,  and,  after  returning 
to  London  and  doing  some  proof-reading,  etc.,  for  Words- 
worth, settles  at  Townend,  Westmoreland,  in  November,  1809, 
in  a  cottage  previously  occupied  by  Wordsworth,  which  he 
proceeds  to  "  fill  with  books  "  ;  he  forms  an  intimate  friend- 
ship with  Professor  Wilson  ("Christopher  North"),  takes 
long  nocturnal  rambles  with  him,  and  visits  him  at  Edinburgh 
during  the  winters  of  1814-15  and  1815-16;  De  Quincey 
continues  to  read  German  metaphysics,  and  seeks  relief  in 
laudanum  for  an  irritation  of  the  stomach;  by  1813  he  is 
taking  three  hundred  and  forty  grains  of  opium  daily  ;  he 
becomes  attached  to  Margaret  Simpson  (daughter  of  a  "  states- 
man "  of  Westmoreland),  reduces  his  opium  allowance  to 
forty  grains  a  day,  improves  in  health,  and  is  married  ;  the 
opium-habit  soon  masters  him  again,  he  gives  up  a  projected 
philosophical  work  to  be  called  "  De  Evicndatione  Humani 
Intellciftts,"  and  becomes  incapable  of  mental  work  ;  he  reads 
Ricardo  in  1819,  and  proceeds  to  draw  up  "  Prolegomena  of 
all  Future  Systems  of  Political  Economy,"  which  he  does  not 
complete;  his  indulgence  in  opium  causes  him  to  be  haunted 
by  monstrous  dreams;  by  the  failure  of  a  bank,  he  loses  most 
of  his  fortune,  and  is  compelled  to  do  something  for  support ; 
he  contributes  to  Blackwood1  s  Magazine  (edited  by  his  friend 
Wilson)  and  to  the  Quarterly  Review,  and,  in  the  summer  of 
1819,  becomes  editor  of  the  Westmoreland  Gazette ;  he  is 
recklessly  liberal  in  his  financial  affairs;  in  1821  he  again  at- 
tempts to  give  up  opium,  goes  to  London,  and  is  befriended 
by  the  Lambs ;  he  meets  Hood,  Talfourd.  and  Hazlitt,  and 
settles  for  a  time  at  4  York  Street,  Covent  Garden,  where  he 
writes  "  The  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium-Eater,"  which 
he  publishes  in  the  London  Magazine  for  October  and  Novem- 
ber, 1821  ;  the  "Confessions"  attract  much  attention,  and 
are  reprinted  in  1822  and  again  in  1823,  with  an  appendix 
giving  a  tabulated  statement  of  his  daily  doses  of  opium  ;  he 
continues  his  contributions  to  the  London  Magazine,  including 


394  DE    QUINCEV 

"  Letters  to  a  Young  Man  Whose  Education  Has  Been  Neg- 
lected "  (1823),  "The  Dialogue  of  the  Three  Templars" 
(1824),  and  others;,  in  1825  he  translates,  modifies,  and  ridi- 
cules the  German  novel  IValladmoor,  falsely  attributed  to  Scott, 
and  contributes  to  Knight1  s  Quarterly,  sometimes  lodging  with 
Knight,  and  manifesting  amusing  simplicity  in  practical  busi- 
ness affairs  ;  he  becomes  recognized  as  a  writer,  and  is  men- 
tioned by  Wilson  in  the  "  Noctes  Ambrosiana  ;"  he  publishes 
in  BfackwooeTs  Magazine  a  translation  of  Lessing's  "  Laoco- 
6n  "  (1826)  and  "Murder  as  One  of  the  Fine  Arts"  (Febru- 
ary, 1827)  ;  his  relations  with  Blackwood' 's  cause  him  to  settle 
in  Edinburgh,  where  he  lodges  in  Wilson's  rooms,  late  in  1828; 
he  contributes  to  the  Edinburgh  Literary  Gazette  during 
1828-30  ;  is  joined  by  his  family  at  Edinburgh  in  1830,  and 
does  not  return  to  Westmoreland ;  in  1832  he  publishes 
"  Klosterheim,"  which,  though  never  popular,  was  success- 
fully dramatized  in  London;  after  1834  he  contributes  to 
Tait  's  Magazine  many  autobiographical  reminiscences  of  Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth,  and  other  literary  friends,  in  which  cer- 
tain indiscreet  revelations  caused  De  Quincey  trouble  afterward, 
though  he  was  hardly  in  a  responsible  mental  condition  when 
the  reminiscences  were  written  ;  between  1833  and  1837  he 
loses  his  wife  and  two  sons  ;  he  lodges  for  a  time  at  42  Lothian 
Street,  Edinburgh,  apart  from  his  children ;  in  1840  he  takes 
a  cottage  at  Mavis  Bush,  Lasswade,  where  his  daughters  settle 
permanently,  and  where  he  stays  in  the  intervals  between  his 
sojourns  in  various  places ;  he  returns  to  his  opium  excesses 
after  his  wife's  death  ;  in  1844,  after  much  suffering,  he  makes 
a  final  effort,  and  reduces  his  daily  dose  to  six  grains,  which 
(his  daughter  says)  he  never  again  exceeded ;  he  hands  over 
his  business  affairs  in  full  to  his  daughter,  and  is  not  afterward 
troubled  about  finances,  except  as  he  is  embarrassed  by  his  per- 
sistent extravagance  and  "wanton  charity";  he  develops  a 
mania  for  accumulating  papers,  and  leaves  six  rooms  full  at  dif- 
ferent places  at  the  time  of  his  death  ;  from  March,  1841,  to 


DE   QUINCEY  395 

June,  1843,  he  is  at  Glasgow  as  the  guest  of  Professor  Lushing- 
ton  and  Professor  Nichol ;  he  lodges  at  Glasgow  much  of  the 
time  from  1843  to  1847  ;  he  contributes  to  Blackivood'1  s  from 
1837  to  1841,  and  writes  biographies  of  Shakespeare,  Pope, 
and  others  for  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica";  publishes 
"  The  Logic  of  Political  Economy  "  in  1844,  and  contributes 
to  Taif  s  Magazine  during  1846  and  1847;  he  meets  James 
Hogg,  who  projects  a  collected  edition  of  De  Quincey's  works ; 
he  is  visited,  in  1851-52,  by  James  T.  Fields,  of  Boston, 
who  gives  him  a  share  of  the  profits  arising  from  the  sale  in 
America  of  De  Quincey's  seven  volumes  of  collected  writings; 
he  afterward  revises  his  collected  writings,  which  are  published 
during  1853-60;  he  contributes,  also,  to  Hogg's  Instructor; 
he  lodges  again  at  42  Lothian  Street,  Edinburgh,  and,  at 
seventy,  is  able  to  walk  fourteen  miles  daily  for  exercise ;  he 
attracts  much  attention  by  his  marvellous  powers  of  conversa- 
tion ;  dies  December  8,  1859. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON  DE  QUINCEY'S  STYLE. 

Bayne,  P.,  "  Essays  in  Biography  and  Criticism."     Boston,  1857,  Gould 

&  Lincoln,  I  :    15-50. 
Gilfillan,  G.,  "  Literary  Portraits."     Edinburgh,  1852,  J.  Hogg,  I  :    104- 

no;   2  :  294-364. 
Hodgson,  S.  H..  "  Outcast  Essays."     London,  1881,  Longmans,   Green 

&  Co.,  1-67. 
Davey,  S.,  "Darwin,   Carlyle,  and  Dickens."     London,  1879,   Bumpus, 

159-185. 
Saintsbury,  G.,    "Essays  in  English  Literature."     London,    1890,  Per- 

cival,  304-339. 
Masson,  D.,   "English  Men  of  Letters."     New  York,   1882,   Harper. 

134-158. 
Stephen,   L.,    "Hours  in  a  Library."     New  York,    1894,    Putnam,  i: 

237-269. 
Hunt,   T.   W.,    "Representative  English    Prose."     New    York,    1887, 

Armstrong,  417-443. 
Minto,  W.,  " English  Prose  Literature. "     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 

49-76. 


DE  QUINCEY 

Mathews,  W.,  "  Hours  with  Men  and  Books."     Chicago,  1882,  Griggs, 

9-58. 
De  Quincey,  T.,  "Works  "  (Autobiography).      Edinburgh,  1889,  A.  &  C. 

Black,  i  :    17-400;   2:    1-81. 
Oliphant,   Mrs.,    "Literary   History   of    England."     New  York,    1889, 

Macmillan,  2 :    18-30. 
Page,  H.  A.,  "  De  Quincey,  His  Life  and  Writings."     New  York,  1877, 

Scribner,  v.  index. 
Mason,  E.  T.,  "  Personal  Traits  of  British  Authors."     New  York,  1885, 

Scribner,  3:   223-275. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,    1883, 

Appleton,  360-365. 
Stephen,   L.,  "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."     New  York,  1890, 

Macmillan,  14:   385-391. 
Masson,   D.,   "Essays  Biographical   and  Critical."     Cambridge,    1856, 

Macmillan,  447-475. 
Oliphant,   Mrs.,  "Victorian  Age  of  English   Literature."     New   York, 

1882,  Macmillan,  2  :    18-29. 

Giles,    H.,  "Illustrations  of  Genius."      Boston,  1854,  Fields,  300-365. 
Christian  Examiner,  74:  77-95  (Cheever);   54:  428-436  (H.  T.  Tucker- 
man). 

British  Quarterly,  66:   415-433  (A.  A.  Page);  38:    1-29. 
Continental  Monthly,  5:  650-662  (L.  W.  Spring). 
Saturday  Review,  66  :   329-330. 
New  Monthly  Magazine,  98 :  389-399   (Sir  Nathaniel)  ;  96 :   142-147 

(Sir  Nathaniel). 
The  Spectator,  64:   730-731. 
North  American  Review,    74:  425-445    (S.    G.    Brown);  88:    113-132 

(Phillips). 

Harper's  Magazine,  I:    141-150. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  12:   345-368  (Alden). 
Dublin  University  Magazine,  43  :  409-425  ;  44:   331-345 
Fortnightly  Review,  15:  310-329  (L.  Stephen). 
Quarterly  Review,  no:    1-35. 
Christian  Remembrancer,  29:    155-191. 

Eraser's Magazine,  62  :   781-792  (H.  W.  F.)  ;  63  :    51-69  (H.  W.  F.). 
Westminster  Review ,  61 :   275-284. 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  37:    117-135  (A.  H.  Japp). 
LitteWs  Living  Age,  66:   151-154  (The  Press);  60:    387-398  (The 

Instructor)  ;  35  :  442-445  (The  Examiner). 


DE   QUINCEY  397 


PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

i.  Excessive  Qualification  and  Suspense. — A  trait 
of  De  Quincey  closely  allied  to  his  habit  of  digression,  and 
one  which  the  general  reader  must  always  regard  as  a  defect, 
is  his  tendency  to  overload  his  sentences  with  irrelevant 
particulars.  He  appends  relative  clause  to  relative  clause  in 
several  degrees  of  subordination,  and  often  adds  to  such  a 
combination  a  parenthesis  within  a  parenthesis.  Obviously, 
this  excessive  qualification  is  generally  due  to  De  Quincey's 
sometimes  finical  desire  for  exactness.  Another  cause  of  his 
"  long  evolutions  "  is  to  be  found  in  his  continued  study  of 
German  authors.  Many  of  his  constructions  are  essentially 
Gothic.  "  Specially  inclined  to  the  elaborate,  periodic  order 
of  sentence,"  says  T.  W.  Hunt,  "  he  found  himself,  at  times, 
so  involved  midway  in  the  structure  as  to  make  clearness 
impossible." 

"His  sentences  are  stately,  elaborate,  crowded  with  quali- 
fying clauses  and  parenthetical  allusions,  to  a  degree  un- 
paralleled among  modern  writers.  If  we  try  De  Quincey  by 
his  own  rule  of  'unwieldy  comprehensiveness,'  we  must  con- 
vict him  of  many  violations." — Minto. 

"  He  is,  from  the  very  principles  on  which  his  style  is  con- 
structed, the  most  diffuse  of  writers.  .  .  .  His  commend- 
able desire  for  lucidity  of  expression  makes  him  nervously 
anxious  to  avoid  any  complexity  of  thought.  .  .  .  He 
abounds  in  diffuse  discussions  of  irrelevant  topics.  .  .  . 
Why,  on  the  very  first  page,  having  occasion  to  mention 
Christendom  in  the  fifteenth  century,  should  he  provide  against 
some  eccentric  misconception  by  telling  us  that  it  did  not,  at 
that  time,  include  any  part  of  America  ?  " — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  He  generally  knows  his  conclusion  from  the  first,  and 
sometimes  announces  it  dogmatically  at  the  outset ;  but, 
whether  for  inquiry  toward  his  conclusion  or  for  proof  of  it 


398  DE   QUINCEY 

after  it  has  been  announced,  his  habit  is  to  choose  a  point  of 
entry  and  thence,  by  subtle  and  intricate  windings,  to  reach 
the  centre,  where  the  concurrent  trains  will  meet,  and  all  will 
become  clear." — Mdsson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Caesar,  the  Dictator,  at  his  last  dinner  party,  on  the  very  even- 
ing before  his  assassination,  when  the  minutes  of  his  earthly 
career  were  numbered,  being  asked  what  death,  in  his  judgment, 
might  be  pronounced  the  most  eligible,  replied,  '  That  which 
should  be  most  sudden.'  " — On  Ccesar. 

"  Whatever  we  may  swear  with  our  false,  feigning  lips,  in  our 
faithful  hearts  ;  we  still  believe,  and  must  forever  believe,  in  fields 
of  air  traversing  the  total  gulf  between  earth  and  the  central 
heavens.  Still,  in  the  confidence  of  children  that  tread  without 
fear  every  chamber  in  their  father's  house,  and  to  whom  no  door 
is  closed,  we,  in  that  Sabbatic  vision,  which  sometimes  is  re- 
vealed for  an  hour  upon  nights  like  this,  ascend  with  easy  steps 
from  the  sorrow-stricken  fields  of  earth  upward  to  the  sandals  of 
God." — An  English  Mail-Coach. 

"  At  this  stage  of  advance,  and  when  a  true  European  feeling 
has  been  created,  a  '  sensus  communist  or  community  of  feeling, 
on  the  main  classification  of  wars,  it  will  become  possible  to  erect 
an  operative  tribunal,  or  central  Amphictyonic  Council  for  all 
Christendom,  not  with  any  commission  to  suppress  wars — a  policy 
which  would  react  as  a  fresh  cause  of  war,  since  high-spirited  na- 
tions would  arm  for  the  purpose  of  resisting  such  arrogant  de- 
crees— but  with  the  purpose  and  effect  of  oftentimes  healing  local 
or  momentary  animosities,  and  also  (by  publishing  the  opinion  of 
Europe  assembled  in  Council)  with  the  effect  of  taking  away  the 
shadow  of  dishonor  from  the  act  of  making  concessions." — On 
War. 

"  I  was  then  fifteen  years  old  and  a  trifle  more,  and,  as  it  had 
come  to  the  knowledge  of  Mr.  G.,  a  banker  in  Lincolnshire  (whom 
hitherto  I  have  omitted  to  notice  among  my  guardians,  as  one 
too  generally  prevented  from  interfering  by  his  remoteness  from 
the  spot,  but  whom  otherwise  I  should  have  recorded  with  honor 
as  by  much  the  ablest  among  them), that  some  pecuniary  advan- 
tages were  attached  to  a  residence  at  the  Manchester  Grammar- 


DE   QUIXCEY  399 

School,  while  in  other  respects  that  school  seemed  as  eligible  as 
any  other,  he  had  counselled  my  mother  to  send  me  hither." — 
Confessions  of  an  Opium-Eater. 

2.  Inveterate  Digression. — In  one  respect  De  Quincey 
is  far  from  a  model  writer,  and  that  is  in  his  ungovernable 
habit  of  digressing  from  his  given  theme.  He  not  only 
digresses  from  his  main  theme,  but  he  digresses  from  his  first 
digression,  and  sometimes  even  from  his  third.  Says  Masson  : 
"  His  windings  have  often  the  appearance  of  wilful  digres- 
sions. .  .  .  His  digressions,  however,  to  use  his  own 
phrase,  '  have  a  wonderful  knack  of  revolving  to  the  point 
whence  they  set  out,'  and  generally  with  a  fresh  freight  of 
meaning  to  be  incorporated  at  that  point.  .  .  .  But 
there  are  cases,  his  greatest  admirers  must  admit,  in  which  the 
subsidiary  swallows  up  the  primary,  and  the  captain's  lug- 
gage all  but  sinks  the  ship  and  cargo."  "At  times,"  says 
another  critic,  "  his  mind  seems  to  move  vaguely  round  in  vast, 
unreturning  circles.  The  thoughts  catch  hold  of  nothing,  but 
are  heaved  and  tossed  like  masses  of  cloud  by  the  wind." 
Minto  also  finds  palliation  for  this  offence  in  De  Quincey's 
consciousness  that  he  is  digressing  and  his  care  in  inform- 
ing the  reader  when  he  leaves  the  main  theme  and  when  he 
returns.  To  use  a  homely  figure,  the  railway-track  of  De 
Quincey's  thought  is  notable  for  the  abundance  of  switches, 
and  switches  from  switches  ;  but  the  point  where  he  leaves 
the  main  track  and  the  point  where  he  returns  are  generally 
marked  by  very  distinct  signals. 

"  You  can  as  soon  calculate  on  the  motions  of  a  stream  of 
the  aurora  as  on  those  of  his  mind.  From  the  title  of  any 
one  of  his  papers,  you  can  never  infer  whether  he  is  to  treat 
the  one  announced  or  a  hundred  others,  or  into  how  many 
foot-notes  he  is  to  draw  away,  as  if  into  subterranean  pipes, 
its  pith  and  substance.  ...  At  every  possible  angle  of 
his  road  he  contrives  to  break  off." — Gilfillan. 


400  DE    QUINCEY 

« 

"  De  Quincey  often  offends  beyond  the  possibility  of  justifi- 
cation, overloading  his  sentences,  in  a  gossiping  kind  of  way, 
with  particulars  that  have  no  relevance  whatever  to  the  main 
statement. ' ' — Minto. 

"  The  goal,  indeed,  is  always  kept  in  view  ;  however  circuit- 
ous the  wandering  may  be,  there  is  always  a  return  to  the 
subject." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  Like  Bishop  Berkeley,  who  commenced  one  of  his  treatises 
on  the  virtues  of  tar-water  and  ended  it  on  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  when  he  [De  Quincey]  begins  a  subject,  no  one  can 
tell  what  it  will  include." — S.  Davey. 

"  It  is  absolutely  impossible  for  him  to  keep  his  subject,  or 
any  subject.  It  is  as  impossible  for  him  to  pull  himself  up 
briefly  in  any  digression  from  that  subject.  In  his  finest  pas- 
sages, as  in  his  most  trivial,  he  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  will-o'- 
the-wisp  of  divagation." — Saintsbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  have  used  my  privilege  of  discursiveness  to  step  aside  from 
Demosthenes  to  another  subject,  not  otherwise  connected  with 
the  Attic  orator  than,  first,  by  the  common  reference  of  both  sub- 
jects to  rhetoric  ;  but,  secondly,  by  the  accident  of  having  been 
jointly  discussed  by  Lord  Brougham  in  a  paper  which  (though 
now  forgotten)  obtained  at  the  moment  most  undue  celebrity." — 
On  Demosthenes. 

"  Looking  back  to  the  foot-note  on  the  oriental  idea  of  the 
hakim,  as  a  mask  politically  assumed  by  Christ  and  the  evangel- 
ists, under  the  conviction  of  its  indispensableness  to  the  free 
propagation  of  Christian  philosophy,  I  am,  indeed,  inclined  for  the 
sake  of  detaining  the  reader's  eye  a  little  longer  upon  a  matter 
so  important  in  the  history  of  Christianity,  if  only  it  may  be  re- 
garded as  true,  to  subjoin  an  extract  from  a  little  paper  written 
by  myself  heretofore,  but  not  published.  I  may  add  these  two 
remarks,  viz.,"  etc. — On  Judas  Iscariot. 

"  Out  of  this  digression,  for  the  purpose  of  showing  how  inex- 
tricably my  feelings  and  images  of  death  were  entangled  with 
those  of  summer,  as  connected  with  Palestine  and  Jerusalem,  let 


DE   QUINCEY  4OI 

me  come  back  to  the  bed-chamber  of  my  sister." — Autobiog- 
raphy. 

"  I  beg  the  reader's  pardon  for  this  disproportioned  digression, 
into  which  I  was  hurried  by  my  love  for  our  great  national  litera- 
ture, my  anxiety  to  see  it  among  educational  resources  invested 
with  a  ministerial  agency  of  far  ampler  character,  but,  at  all  events, 
to  lodge  a  protest  against  that  wholesale  neglect  of  our  supreme 
authors  which  leaves  us  open  to  the  stinging  reproach  of  '  tread- 
ing daily  with  our  clouted  shoon  '  (to  borrow  the  words  of  Comus) 
upon  that  which  high-minded  foreigners  regard  as  the  one  para- 
mount jewel  in  our  national  diadem. 

"  This  incident  I  have  digressed  to  mention  because  this  Malay 
(partly  from  the  picturesque  exhibition  he  assisted  to  frame, 
partly  from  the  anxiety  I  connected  with  his  image  for  some  days) 
fastened  afterward  upon  my  fancy,  and  through  that  upon  my 
dreams,  bringing  with  him  other  Malays  worse  than  himself,  that 
ran  '  amuck '  at  me  and  led  me  into  a  world  of  nocturnal  trou- 
bles. " —  Opium- Eater. 

3.  Scrupulous  Precision — Subtlety.— De  Qtiincey  is 
one  of  the  most  accurate  of  our  writers  in  his  use  of  language. 
If  the  highest  attainment  in  style  is  always  to  use  the  right  word 
in  the  right  place,  then  the  estimate  placed  upon  De  Quincey 
by  Masson,  William  Mathews,  and  others  must  be  accepted 
as  correct.  Mathews  calls  him  "  by  universal  acknowledg- 
ment the  most  powerful  and  versatile  master  of  the  English 
tongue  in  our  time."  He  is  certainly  the  most  scholarly,  the 
most  subtle  and  analytic  of  the  great  essayists.  De  Quincey 
once  said  of  himself:  ''From  my  birth  I  was  made  an  in- 
tellectual creature.  .  .  .  My  proper  vocation,  as  I  well 
knew,  was  the  exercise  of  the  analytic  understanding."  Mas- 
son  declares  that  "  De  Quincey's  sixteen  volumes  of  magazine 
articles  are  full  of  brain  from  beginning  to  end."  It  is,  in 
part,  at  least,  the  marvellous  range  of  De  Quincey's  scholarship 
that  gives  him  "his  wonderful  power  of  alighting  on  the 
exact  word  that  is  fittest."  As  Wilson  puts  it:  "The  best 
word  always  comes  up."  De  Quincey  has  what  Masson  calls 
26 


402  DE   QUINCEY 

"  the  metaphysical  mood."  Says  another  critic:  "We  are 
struck  at  once  by  the  exquisite  refinement  of  mind,  the  sub- 
tleness of  association,  and  the  extreme  tenuity  of  the  threads 
of  thought."  "  Nothing  can  be  more  exquisite,"  says  Minto, 
"  than  De  Quincey's  subtlety  in  distinguishing  wherein  things 
agree  and  wherein  they  differ.  .  .  .  The  strong  point  in 
his  diction  is  his  acquaintance  with  the  language  of  the 
thoughts  and  feelings,  with  the  subjective  side  of  the  English 
vocabulary.  .  .  .  None  of  our  .writers  in  general  litera- 
ture have  shown  themselves  so  scrupulously  precise."  De 
Quincey  sometimes  carries  this  quality  to  an  extreme  by  need- 
lessly cumbering  his  sentences  with  definitions  of  the  terms 
used  and  with  too  minute  explicitness  of  statement.  He  de- 
lights in  subtle  speculations,  in  the  analysis  of  motives,  in  con- 
jecture as  to  the  possible  results  of  an  action.  He  has  what  he 
himself  calls  "  an  inner  eye  and  power  of  intuition  for  the  un- 
seen." He  "  revels  in  nice  distinctions  and  scrupulous  qual- 
ifications." 

"  So  far  as  one  might  acquiesce  in  the  description  of  some 
of  De  Quincey's  mental  products  as  '  wire-drawn,'  it  is  in 
cases  where  one  might  agree  with  Carlyle,  that  the  kind  of 
matter  dealt  with  was  not  worth  so  much  manipulation,  and 
that  simple  assumption  or  asseveration  or  decision  by  a  toss-up, 
would  have  saved  time  and  answered  all  practical  purposes. 
Very  rarely,  however,  will  one  of  De  Quincey's  subt- 
lest ingenuities  be  voted  useless  by  any  reader  who  does  come 
qualified  with  the  due  amount  of  preliminary  interest  in  the 
kind  of  matter  discussed — so  much  pleasure  is  there  in  ob- 
serving the  ingenuity  itself,  and  so  certain  it  is,  as  has  been 
already  said,  that  some  germ  of  future  thought  will  be  left  if 
the  immediate  result  has  been  disappointing.  Then,  with 
what  a  passion  for  scientific  exactness  does  De  Quincey  treat 
everything,  and  in  what  a  state  of  finished  clearness  at  the  end 
he  leaves  every  speculation  of  his,  so  far  as  it  may  have  been 
carried  !  His  numerical  divisions  and  subdivisions,  so  un- 


DE   QUINCEY  403 

usual  in  literary  papers,  are  themselves  signs  of  the  practised 
thinker  refusing  to  part  with  any  of  the  habits  or  devices  of 
scientific  analysts  wherever  they  will  help  him.  In  short,  very 
seldom  has  there  been  such  a  combination  of  the  purely  log- 
ical intellect  with  so  much  of  scholarly  erudition." — Masson. 

"  He  has  all  the  characteristics  of  a  scholar  of  the  best  and 
rarest  kind — the  scholar  who  is  exact  as  to  language  without 
failing  to  comprehend  literature  and  competent  in  literature 
without  being  slipshod  as  to  language." — Saintsbury. 

"  Each  step  of  his  argument,  each  shade  of  meaning,  and 
each  fact  in  his  narrative,  must  have  its  own  separate  embodi- 
ment ;  and  each  joint  and  connecting  link  must  be  carefully 
and  accurately  defined." — Leslie  Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  In  that  great  social  organ  which,  collectively,  we  call  litera- 
ture there  may  be  distinguished  two  separate  offices  that  may 
blend,  and  often  do  so,  but  capable,  severally,  of  a  severe  insu- 
lation, and  naturally  fitted  for  reciprocal  repulsion.  The  function 
of  the  first  is  to  teach  ;  the  function  of  the  second  is  to  move. 
The  first  is  a  rudder  ;  the  second,  an  oar  or  a  sail." — Essays. 

"  Wine  unsettles  and  clouds  the  judgment,  and  gives  a  preter- 
natural brightness  and  a  vivid  exaltation  to  the  contempts  and 
admirations,  to  the  loves  and  the  hatreds,  of  the  drinker  ;  opium, 
on  the  contrary,  communicates  serenity  and  equipoise  to  all  the 
faculties,  active  and  passive  ;  and,  with  respect  to  the  temper  and 
moral  feelings  in  general,  it  gives  simply  that  sort  of  vital  warmth 
which  is  approved  by  the  judgment,  and  which  would  probably 
always  accompany  a  bodily  constitution  of  primeval  or  antedi- 
luvian health." — Confessions  of  an  Opium-Eater . 

"  What,  then,  is  religion  ?  Decomposed  into  its  elements,  as 
they  are  found  in  Christianity,  how  many  powers  for  acting  on  the 
heart  of  man  does,  by  possibility,  this  great  agency  include  ? 
According  to  my  own  view,  four.  I  will  state  them  and  number 
them.  Firstly,  a  form  of  worship,  a  cultus.  Secondly,  an  idea 
of  God.  .  .  .  Thirdly,  an  idea  of  the  relation  which  man  oc- 
cupies to  God.  .  .  .  Fourthly,  a  doctrinal  part,  .  .  .  and 


4O4  DE   QUINCEY 

this  [doctrinal  part]  divides  into  two  great  sections." — Christian- 
ity an  Organ  of  Political  Movement. 

"  In  general,  whenever  a  paramount  interest  of  human  nature 
is  at  stake,  a  suicide  which  maintains  that  interest  is  self-homi- 
cide ;  but,  for  a  personal  interest,  it  becomes  self-murder." — 
Murder  as  a  Fine  Art. 

4.  Stately  Rhythm. — De  Quincey  ranks  with  Hooker 
and  Milton  as  a  master  of  stately,  melodious  cadence.  Says 
Leslie  Stephen  :  "  De  Quincey  stands  absolutely  alone  as  the 
inventor  and  sole  performer  on  a  new  musical  instrument — 
for  such  an  instrument  is  the  English  language  in  his  hands. 
The  sentences  are  so  delicately  balanced  and  so  skil- 
fully constructed  that  his  finer  passages  fix  themselves  in  the 
memory  without  the  aid  of  metre.  .  .  .  His  most  ex- 
quisite passages  are  intended  to  be  musical  compositions  in 
which  words  have  to  play  the  part  of  notes.  .  .  .  If  De 
Quincey  obtains,  without  the  aid  of  metre,  graces  which  few 
other  writers  have  won  by  the  same  means,  it  is  all  the  more 
creditable  to  De  Quincey.  One  may  fancy  that,  if  De  Quin- 
cey's  language  were  emptied  of  all  meaning  whatever,  the 
mere  sound  of  the  words  would  move  us,  as  the  lovely  word 
Mesopotamia  moved  Whitefield's  hearers."  The  Opium- 
Eater  gloried  in  this  power  of  his ;  he  delights  in  what  he 
calls  "bravura,"  "melodious  ascents."  "His  prose,"  says 
T.  W.  Hunt,  "  possesses  what  Beethoven  calls  '  pronunciabili- 
ty,'  and  what  Masson  calls  'musical  beauty.'  .  .  .  Intellect- 
ual as  his  style  was,  it  was  conspicuously  artistic,  and  this 
pictorial  and  artistic  quality  rises  at  times  to  magnificence." 
Mathews  calls  De  Quincey's  prose  "  the  most  passionately 
eloquent,  the  most  thoroughly  poetical  prose  our  language  has 
produced,  the  organ-like  variety  and  grandeur  of  its  cadence 
affecting  the  mind  as  only  perfect  verse  affects  it."  Masson 
calls  it  "  the  style  of  sustained  splendor,  of  prolonged  wheel- 
ing and  soaring,  as  distinct  from  the  style  of  crackle  and  brief 
glitter,  of  chirp  and  short  flight."  One  critic  says  of  certain 


DE   QUINCEY  405 

passages  in  De  Quincey's  "  Suspt'ria,"  "  The  mind  is  swept 
away  by  them  into  some  shadowy  region,  where  one  vision  of 
innocence,  or  beauty,  or  fear,  or  sorrow  chases  another  till 
all  at  last  '  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. '  '  In  one  of 
his  essays,  De  Quincey  interrupts  himself  to  explain  that  he 
might  have  ended  the  sentence  more  briefly  by  substituting 
for  the  last  nine  words  the  single  term  master-builder,  but 
adds  that  his  ear  could  not  endure  "a.  sentence  ending  with 
two  consecutive  trochees,  and  each  of  these  trochees  ending 
with  the  same  syllable — er. "  "Ah,  reader,"  he  exclaims, 
"  I  would  the  gods  had  made  thee  rhythmical,  that  thou 
mightest  comprehend  the  thousandth  part  of  my  labors  in 
the  evasion  of  cacophony  !  " 

"  The  acutest  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  most  gorgeous 
and  eloquent  writer  of  English  prose  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, combining  the  rarely  harmonizing  elements  of  severe 
logic  and  exuberant  fancy." — William  Mathews. 

"  Many  passages  might  be  quoted  from  De  Quincey  of  which 
the  melody  is  so  striking  as  irresistibly  to  attract  attention 
and  make  us  linger  lovingly  over  them,  apart  altogether  from 
the  matter  they  contain." — H.  G.  Nicoll. 

"  De  Quincey  is  rich  in  the  language  of  elaborate  stateliness. 

He  takes  rank  with  Milton  as  one  of  the  masters  of 

stately  cadence  as  well  as  of  sublime  composition.     .     .     . 

He  finds  the  happiest  exercise  of  his   powers  in   sustained 

flights  through  the  region  of  the  sublime." — Minto, 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  From  the  silence  and  deep  peace  of  this  summer  night — from 
the  pathetic  blending  of  this  sweet  moonlight,  dawnlight,  dream- 
light — from  the  manly  tenderness  of  this  flattering,  whispering, 
murmuring  love — suddenly,  as  from  the  woods  and  fields — sud- 
denly, as  from  the  chambers  of  the  air  opening  in  revelation — 
suddenly,  as  from  the  ground  yawning  at  her  feet,  leaped  upon 
her,  with  the  flashing  of  cataracts,  Death,  the  crowned  phantom, 


406  DE   QUINCEY 

with  all  the  equipage  of  his  terrors  and  the  tiger-roar  of  his 
voice." — The  Stage- Coach. 

"  O  just,  subtile,  and  mighty  opium  !  that  to  the  hearts  of 
poor  and  rich  alike,  for  the  wounds  that  will  never  heal  and  for 
1  the  pangs  that  tempt  the  spirit  to  rebel,'  bringest  an  assuaging 
balm  ;  eloquent  opium  !  that  with  thy  potent  rhetoric  stealest 
away  the  purposes  of  wrath,  and,  to  the  guilty  man,  for  one  night 
givest  back  the  hopes  of  youth  and  hands  washed  pure  from 
blood . " —  Confessions  of  an  Opium- Eater. 

"  Then,  like  a  chorus,  the  passion  deepened.  Some  greater 
interest  was  at  stake,  some  mightier  cause  than  ever  yet  the 
world  had  pleaded  or  trumpet  had  proclaimed.  Then  came  sud- 
den alarms  ;  hurryings  to  and  fro  ;  trepidations  of  innumerable 
fugitives  ;  darkness  and  light ;  tempests  and  human  faces  ;  and 
at  last,  with  the  sense  that  all  was  lost,  female  forms  and  the 
features  that  were  worth  all  the  world  to  me  ;  and,  but  a  moment 
allowed — and  clasped  hands,  with  heart-breaking  partings,  and 
then — everlasting  farewells !  and,  with  such  a  sigh  as  the  caves 
of  hell  sighed  when  the  incestuous  mother  uttered  the  abhorred 
name  of  Death,  the  sound  was  reverberated — everlasting  fare- 
wells !  and  again,  and  yet  again  reverberated — everlasting  fare- 
wells !  " — Confessions  of  an  Opium- Eater. 


5.  Sense  of  the  Mysterious. — A  profound  sense  of 
awe  in  the  presence  of  the  phenomena  of  nature  characterizes 
De  Quincey's  mind  and  style.  Says  Leslie  Stephen:  "He 
appeals  to  our  terror  of  the  infinite,  to  the  shrinking  of  the 
human  mind  before  astronomical  distances  and  geological 
periods  of  time.  He  paints  vast  perspectives,  opening  in  long 
succession,  till  we  grow  dizzy  in  the  contemplation.  .  . 
Melancholy  and  an  awe-stricken  sense  of  the  vast  and  vague 
are  the  emotions  which  he  communicates  with  the  greatest 
power."  Minto  observes  that  De  Quincey's  tendency  was  to 
"  discover  and  develop  lurking  objects  of  admiration  and  as- 
tonishment." He  seems  constantly  to  be  under  the  impres- 
sion that  certain  mysterious  and  occult  agencies,  not  conceived 


DE   QUINCEY  4O/ 

by  ordinary  men,  are  interfering  with  human  affairs.  Masson 
suggests  that  "the  best  name  for  this  variety  of  the  affection 
for  the  mysterious  in  De  Quincey's  mind  is  Druidism,  or  the 
Druidic  element.  He  was  wrapt  in  religious  wonder ;  he 
went  through  the  world,  one  may  say,  in  a  fit  of  metaphysical 
musing.  .  .  .  The  thunder  and  the  lightning,  the  sun 
in  the  heavens,  the  nocturnal  sky,  the  quiet  vastness  of  a 
mountain  range,  the  roar  of  the  unresting  ocean,  the  carnage 
of  a  great  battle-field,  the  stealthy  ravage  of  a  pestilence — such 
were  the  physical  grandeurs,  and  such  the  facts  and  moments 
of  historic  majesty,  with  which  De  Quincey's  mind  delighted 
to  commune.  It  was  a  saying  of  his  own  that  he  could  not 
live  without  mystery.  No  man  that  is  worth  much  can." 

"  He  is  to  some  extent  an  intellectual  mystic — meaning  a 
certain  affinity  for  the  mysterious — a  strange  idiosyncrasy,  in 
which  associations  of  terror,  of  gladness,  or  of  gloom  link 
themselves  with  certain  seasons  and  places." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  None,  we  think,  have  so  dipped  their  pens  in  the  varied 
lines  of  sunshine  and  gloom,  or  been  able  to  fix  that  which  is 
fleeting  and  transient.  De  Quincey  lived  in  a 

dream-world  until  dreams  became,  as  it  were,  the  substantial 
realities  of  his  existence." — S.  Davey. 

"  He  is  much  of  a  thinker  on  the  metaphysics  of  things, 
and  he  feels  the  mystery  of  being;  he  is  much  of  an  inquirer 
into  the  constitution  of  things,  and  he  feels  the  mystery  of 
creation  ;  he  is  much  of  a  muser  on  this  full  world,  this  vital 
world,  throbbing  in  every  speck  of  it  with  a  quickening  pulse, 
and  he  feels  the  mystery  of  life." — H.  Giles. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  sun  of  midsummer,  at  mid-day,  was  showering  down  tor- 
rents of  splendor.  The  weather  was  dry,  the  sky  was  cloudless, 
the  blue  depths  seemed  the  express  types  of  infinity  ;  and  it  was 
not  possible  for  the  eye  to  behold  or  for  the  heart  to  conceive  any 
symbols  more  pathetic  of  life  and  the  glory  of  life.  ...  A 


408  DE   QU1XCEY 

solemn  wind  began  to  blow — the  saddest  that  ear  ever  heard.  It 
was  a  wind  that  might  have  swept  the  fields  of  mortality  for  a 
thousand  centuries ;  whose  hollow,  sad,  Memnonian  but  saintly 
swell  was  the  one  great  audible  symbol  of  eternity.  Then  a 
trance  fell  upon  me.  A  vault  seemed  to  open  in  the  zenith  of 
the  far,  blue  sky,  a  shaft  which  ran  up  forever.  Frost  gathering 
frost,  some  Sarsar  wind  of  death  seemed  to  repel  me  ;  some 
mighty  relation  between  God  and  death  dimly  struggled  to  evolve 
itself  from  the  dreadful  antagonism  between  them." — Autobiog- 
raphy. 

"  The  awful  stillness  oftentimes  of  summer  noons,  when  no 
winds  were  abroad,  the  appealing  silence  of  gray  or  misty  after- 
noons— these  were  fascinations  as  of  witchcraft.  Into  the  woods, 
into  the  desert  air  1  gazed,  as  if  some  comfort  lay  hid  in  them. 
Obstinately  I  tormented  the  blue  depths  with  my  scrutiny,  sweep- 
ing them  forever  with  my  eyes  and  searching  them  for  one  angelic 
face  that  might  perhaps  have  permission  to  reveal  itself  for  a 
moment." — A  utobiography. 

"  Great  is  the  mystery  of  Space,  greater  is  the  mystery  of  Time. 
Either  mystery  grows  upon  man  as  man  himself  grows  ;  and 
either  seems  to  be  a  function  of  the  godlike  which  is  in  man.  He 
trembles  at  the  abyss  into  which  his  bodily  eyes  look  down." 
— Autobiography. 

6.  Erudition — Extensive  Range. — "One  may  mark 
the  indications  of  a  gigantic  receptive  faculty  seizing  hundred- 
handed,  and  gathering  into  one  store-house,  from  all  lands  and 
centuries,  what  intellectual  treasures  it  chooses  to  make  its 
own. " — Peter  Bayne. 

"  One  of  the  first  things  that  strikes  us  is  the  multifarious- 
ness  of  his  knowledge.  A  systematic  student  in  none  of  the 
sciences,  nevertheless  he  had  gleaned  technical  terms  from 
every  science." — Minto. 

"  An  obvious  characteristic  of  De  Quincey's  writings  is  their 
extreme  multifariousness.  They  range  over  an  extraordinary 
extent  of  ground,  the  subjects  of  which  they  treat  being  them- 
selves the  most  diverse  kinds,  while  their  illustrative  references 
and  allusions  shoot  through  a  perfect  wilderness  of  miscellane- 


DE   QUINCEY  4O9 

ous  scholarship.  .  .  .  There  are  few  courses  of  reading 
from  which  a  young  man  of  good  natural  intelligence  would 
come  away  more  instructed,  charmed,  and  stimulated,  or,  to 
express  the  matter  as  definitely  as  possible,  with  his  mind  more 
stretched.  Good  natural  intelligence,  a  certain  fineness  of 
fibre,  and  some  amount  of  scholarly  education,  have  to  be 
presupposed,  indeed,  in  all  readers  of  De  Quincey.  But,  even 
for  the  fittest  readers,  a  month's  continuous  course  of  De  Quin- 
cey would  be  too  much.  Better  have  him  on  the  shelf,  and 
take  down  a  volume  at  intervals  for  one  or  two  of  the  articles 
to  which  there  may  be  an  immediate  attraction.  An  evening 
with  De  Quincey  in  this  manner  will  always  be  profitable. 
Not  only  was  it  De  Quincey's  laudable  habit  to  put  brain 
into  all  his  articles,  but  it  so  chanced  that  the  brain  he  had  at 
his  disposal  was  a  brain  of  no  common  order.  Let  us  get  rid, 
however,  of  the  disagreeable  word  brain,  and  ask,  in  more 
manly  and  less  physiological  fashion,  what  were  the  chief  char- 
acteristics of  De  Quincey's  peculiar  mind  and  genius.  At  the 
basis  of  all,  as  we  have  seen,  was  his  wealth  of  miscellaneous 
and  accurate  knowledge." — Masson. 

"  Few  English  writers  have  touched  so  large  a  number  of 
subjects  with  such  competence,  both  in  information  and  in 
handling. ' ' — Saintsbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Such  is  man,  though  a  Deucalion  elect;  such  is  woman, 
though  a  decent  Pyrrha.  .  .  .  Against  thugs,  I  had  Juvenal's 
license  to  be  careless  in  the  emptiness  of  my  pockets  (cantabit 
I'acuus  coram  latione  viator}.  .  .  .  The  first,  to  borrow  a 
technical  distinction  from  medicine,  is  a  case  of  acute,  the  second 
of  chronic  pleasure.  ...  I  was,  indeed,  like  a  person  who, 
according  to  the  old  pagan  legend,  had  entered  the  cave  of  Tro- 
phonius.  .  .  .  Being  an  oracle,  it  is  my  wish  to  behave  my- 
self like  an  oracle  and  not  to  evade  any  decent  man's  questions 
in  the  way  that  Apollo  too  often  did  at  Delphi." — Confessions  of 
an  Opium- Eater. 


4IO  DE  QUINCEY 

"  Lord  Bacon  it  is  who  notices  the  subtle  policy  which  may  lurk 
in  the  mere  external  figure  of  a  table.  A  square  table,  having  an 
undeviable  head  and  foot,  two  polar  extremities  of  what  is  highest 
and  lowest,  a  perihelion  and  an  aphelion,  together  with  equatorial 
sides,  opens  at  a  glance  a  large  career  to  ambition  ;  while  a  cir- 
cular table  sternly  represses  all  such  aspiring  dreams,  and  so  does 
a  triangular  table.  Yet  if  the  triangle  should  be  right-angled, 
then  the  Lucifer  seated  at  the  right  angle  might  argue  that  he 
subtended  all  the  tenants  of  the  hypothenuse  ;  being,  therefore, 
as  much  nobler  than  they  as  Atlas  wasjiobler  than  the  globe  which 
he  carried." — Confessions  of  an  Opium-Eater . 


7.  Affected  Familiarity — Forced  Homeliness  — 

Slang. — De  Quincey  seems  to  have  realized  that  the  diffuse- 
ness  and  stateliness  of  his  style  would  prevent  him  from  be- 
coming a  popular  writer,  for  we  frequently  find  evidences  of 
a  deliberate  and  forced  attempt  to  be  popular  in  his  diction. 
Like  all  forced  attempts  in  writing,  these  are  melancholy  fail- 
ures. The  result,  in  De  Quincey's  case,  comes  nearer  vulgarity 
than  anything  else,  and  can  but  be  regarded  as  a  blemish  on 
a  style  possessed  of  many  rare  beauties.  Says  Stephen  :  "  He 
is  conscious  that,  as  a  great  master  of  language,  he  can  play 
what  tricks  he  pleases,  without  danger  of  remonstrance.  And 
therefore  he  every  now  and  then  plunges  into  slang,  not  ir- 
reverently, as  a  vulgar  writer  might  do,  but  of  malice  pre- 
pense. The  shock  is  almost  as  great  as  if  an  organist  perform- 
ing a  solemn  tune  should  suddenly  introduce  the  imitation  of 
the  mewing  of  a  cat."  Another  critic  calls  De  Quincey's 
slangy  apostrophes  "  exquisite  foolery." 

"  By  a  kind  of  reaction  from  his  other  extreme  of  stateli- 
ness, he  is  apt  to  be  too  familiar  and  colloquial  and  to  help 
himself  to  slang  and  kitchen-rhetoric." — Masson. 

"  He  has  a  singular  facility  of  fusing  his  most  learned  spec- 
ulations into  the  idiom  of  English  thinking,  even  into  the 
idiom  of  its  drollery  and  its  slang." — H.  Giles. 


DE   QUINCEY  41 1 

"  He  does  not  disdain  to  use  the  slang  of  all  classes,  from 
Cockney  to  Oxonian." — Minto. 

"  He  is  a  complete  master  of  the  English  language — even  of 
its  slang." — 6".  Davey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Wicked  Joseph,  listen  to  me  :  You've  been  telling  us  a  fairy- 
tale ;  and,  for  my  part,  I've  no  objection  to  a  fairy-tale  in  any 
situation,  because,  if  one  can  make  no  use  of  it  oneself,  always 
one  knows  that  a  child  will  be  thankful  for  it.  But  this  tale,  Mr. 
Joseph,  happens  also  to  be  a  lie  ;  secondly,  a  fraudulent  lie  ; 
thirdly,  a  malicious  lie." — The  Essencs. 

'"I  (said  Augustus  Caesar)  found  Rome  built  of  brick,  but  I 
left  it  built  of  marble.'  Well,  my  man,  we  reply,  for  a  wondrous- 
ly  little  chap,  you  did  what  in  Westmoreland  they  call  a  good 
darroch  (day's  work)  ;  and  if  navvies  had  been  wanted  in 
those  days,  you  should  have  had  our  vote  to  a  certainty." — 
Essay  on  Casar. 

"  If,  quitting  the  one  great  blazing  jewel,  the  Urim  and  Thum- 
mim  of  the  Iliad  [Achilles],  you  descend  to  individual  passages 
of  poetic  effect,  and  if  among  these  a  fancy  should  seize  you  of 
asking  for  a  specimen  of  the  sublime  in  particular,  what  is  it  that 
you  are  offered  by  the  critics  ?  Nothing  that  we  remember  be- 
yond one  single  passage,  in  which  the  god  Neptune  is  described 
in  a  steeplechase  and  making  play  at  a  terrific  pace.  And  cer- 
tainly, enough  is  exhibited  of  the  old  boy's  hoofs  and  their  spank- 
ing qualities  to  warrant  our  backing  him  against  a  railroad  for  a 
rump  and  dozen  ;  but  after  all,  there  is  nothing  to  grow  frisky 
about,  as  Longinus  does,  who  gets  up  the  steam  of  a  blue- 
stocking enthusiasm,  and  boils  us  a  regular  gallop  of  routing." 
— A  Brief  Appraisal  of  Greek  Literature. 

"Joanna  never  was  in  service;  and  my  opinion  is  that  her 
father  should  have  mended  his  own  stockings,  since  probably  he 
was  the  party  to  make  the  holes  in  them,  as  many  a  better  man 
than  D'Arc  does,  meaning  by  that  not  myself,  because,  though 
probably  a  better  man  than  D'Arc,  I  protest  against  doing  any- 
thing of  the  kind.  .  .  .  The  better  men  that  I  meant  were 
the  sailors  in  the  British  Navy,  every  man  of  whom  mends  his 


412  DE   QUINCEY 

own  stockings.  Who  else  is  to  do  it  ?  Do  you  suppose  that  the 
junior  lords  of  the  admiralty  are  under  articles  to  darn  for  the 
navy  ?  "—Joan  of  Arc. 

8.  Grotesque,  Playful  Humor. — De  Quincey's  humor 
has  little  of  the  genial  quality  which  marks  that  of  Lamb  and 
Goldsmith.  In  many  cases  it  consists  of  treating  horrible 
themes  in  a  cool,  deliberate  way,  as  if  he  were  talking  of  the 
most  innocent  actions  of  every-day  life  or  the  data  of  some 
science.  Minto  calls  it  "  the  humour  of  bringing  the  ideas 
of  fine  art  and  ordinary  business  into  ludicrous  collision 
with  solemn  or  horrible  transactions."  In  the  opinion  of 
another  critic,  "  the  first  paper  on  Murder  as  One  of  the  Fine 
Arts,  with  its  various  and  out-of-the-way  lore,  with  its  mixture 
of  subtile  discrimination  and  satire  and  rollicking  humor,  is 
worthy  "of  Professor  Wilson  or  Charles  Lamb. ' ' 

"  He  shows  us  grotesque  and  fanciful  shapes,  with  beautiful 
devices  ;  faces  of  cherubims  and  archangels,  side  by  side  with 
goblin-like  forms  and  unearthly  shapes  of  monstrous  divini- 
ties."— S.  Davey. 

"  De  Quincey's  humor  is  odd,  unique,  as  original  as  his 
genius.  Always  playful  and  stingless,  it  takes  at  one  time  the 
form  of  a  banter,  at  another  that  of  mock  dignity.  At  one 
hour  it  greets  us  in  the  grave  robe  of  the  critic,  and  pokes  fun 
at  the  learned  ;  at  another,  in  the  scarlet  dress  of  the  satirist, 
and  blasts  hypocrisy  with  its  ridicule." — William  Mathews. 

"  The  delicate  wit  and  irony  of  the  essay  upon  '  Murder  as 
a  Fine  Art '  has  moved  many  a  reader  to  such  a  laugh,  tem- 
pered with  a  thrill  of  visionary  excitement  and  horror,  as  is 
rare  among  the  laughters  of  literature." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  A  sense  of  fun  follows  him  into  his  most  serious  disqui- 
sitions, and  reveals  itself  in  freaks  of  playfulness  and  jets  of 
comic  fancy.  ...  In  its  display  on  a  smaller  scale,  it  is 
generally  good-natured  and  kindly.  .  .  .  It  cannot  be  said 
that  his  humour  is  of  the  largest-hearted  kind,  so  dependent  is 


DE   QUINCEY  413 

it  on  deliberate  irony,  a  Petronian  jostling  of  the  ghastly  with 
the  familiar  or  the  express  simulation  of  lunacy." — Masson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  If  once  a  man  indulge  in  murder,  he  comes  very  soon  to 
think  little  of  robbing  ;  from  robbing  he  comes  to  drinking  and 
Sabbath- breaking,  and  from  that  to  incivility  and  procrastina- 
tion. Many  a  man  has  dated  his  ruin  from  some  murder  or 
other  that  perhaps  he  thought  little  of  at  the  time." — Murder  as 
a  Fine  Art. 

"  Gentlemen — I  have  had  the  honor  to  be  appointed  by  your 
committee  to  the  trying  task  of  reading  the  Williams'  Lecture  on 
Murder  considered  as  one  of  the  Fine  Arts — a  task  which  might 
be  easy  enough  three  or  four  centuries  ago,  when  the  art  was 
little  understood  and  few  great  models  had  been  exhibited ;  but 
in  this  age,  when  masterpieces  of  excellence  have  been  exe- 
cuted by  professional  men,  it  must  be  evident  that,  in  the  style 
of  criticism  applied  to  them,  the  public  will  look  for  something 
of  a  corresponding  improvement.  Practice  and  theory  must  ad- 
vance pari  passu.  People  begin  to  see  that  something  more 
goes  to  the  composition  of  a  fine  murder  than  two  blockheads 
to  kill  and  to  be  killed — a  knife — a'  purse — and  a  dark  lane. 
Design,  gentlemen,  grouping,  light  and  shade,  poetry,  sentiment, 
are  now  deemed  indispensable  to  attempts  of  this  nature." — 
Murder  as  a  Fine  Art. 

"  It  has  been  repeatedly  affirmed  by  the  learned  that  opium  is 
a  tawny  brown  in  color — and  this,  take  notice,  I  grant  ;  second- 
ly, that  it  is  rather  dear — which  also  I  grant ;  and  thirdly,  if 
you  eat  a  good  deal  of  it,  most  probably  you  must  do  what  is 
disagreeable  to  any  man  of  regular  habits,  viz.,  die." — Confes- 
sions of  an  Opium- Eater. 

"  Hobbes — but  why,  or  on  what  principle,  I  never  could  un- 
derstand— was  not  murdered.  This  was  a  capital  oversight  of 
the  professional  men  of  the  seventeenth  century  ;  because  in 
every  light  he  was  a  fine  subject  for  murder,  except,  indeed,  that 
he  was  lean  and  skinny  ;  for  I  can  prove  that  he  had  money,  and 
(what  is  very  funny)  he  had  no  right  to  make  the  least  resistance  ; 
since,  according  to  himself,  irresistible  power  creates  the  very 
highest  species  of  right,  so  that  it  is  rebellion  of  the  blackest  dye 


414  DE   QUINCEY 

to  refuse  to  be  murdered  when  a  competent  force  appears  to 
murder  you." — Murder  as  a  Fine  Art. 

9.  Perception  of  Resemblances. — De  Quincey  has 
what  he  himself  calls  "  the  higher  faculty  of  an  electric  apti- 
tude for  seizing  analogies  .  .  . — the  logical  instinct  for 
feelin-g  in  a  moment  the  secret  parallelisms  that  connect 
things  apparently  remote" — what  T.  W.  Hunt  calls  "the 
detection  of  those  hidden  analogies  that  escape  most  men." 
He  is  a  model  of  exact  comparison. 

"  Another  rare  endowment,  which  he  has  to  a  wonderful 
degree,  is  the  power  of  detecting  resemblances." — Mathews. 

"It  is  a  logical  intellect,  acute  in  the  discovery  of  agree- 
ment and  difference,  fertile  in  methods  of  comparison,  and 
decisive  in  rectitude  of  inference. " — H.  Giles. 

"  To  point  out  with  deliberate — some  would  say  with  tedi- 
ous— scrupulosity  the  resembling  circumstances  in  the  things 
compared,  peculiarly  suits  his  subtilizing  turn  of  mind.  He 
never  seems  to  be  in  a  hurry,  and  does  not  aspire  to  hit  off  a 
similitude  in  a  few  pregnant  words  ;  his  characteristic  is 
punctilious  accuracy,  regardless  of  expense  in  the  matter  of 
words.  Nothing  can  be  more  exquisite  than  his  subtlety  in 
distinguishing  wherein  things  agree  and  wherein  they  dis- 
agree."— Minto. 

"  In  the  act  of  thinking  anything,  metonymies,  meta- 
phors, anecdotes,  illustrations,  historical  or  fantastic,  start  up 
in  his  mind,  become  incorporate  with  his  primary  thought, 
and  are,  in  fact,  its  language." — Masson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"But  strange,  indeed,  where  everything  seems  strange,  is  the 
arrangement  of  the  Ceylonese  territory  and  people.  Take  a 
peach  ;  what  you  call  the  flesh  of  the  peach,  the  substance  which 
you  eat,  is  massed  orbicularly  round  a  central  stone — often  as 
large  as  a  pretty  large  strawberry.  Now,  in  Ceylon  the  central 
district,  answering  to  this  peach-stone,  constitutes  a  fierce  little 


DE   QUINCEY  415 

Lilliputian  kingdom,  quite  independent,  through  many  centuries, 
of  the  lazy  belt,  the  peach-flesh,  which  swathes  and  enfolds  it, 
and  perfectly  distinct  by  the  character  and  origin  of  its  popu- 
lation. The  peach-stone  is  called  Kandy  and  the  people  Kan- 
dyans." — Essays. 

"  To  take  an  image  from  the  language  of  eclipses,  the  corre- 
spondence between  the  disk  of  the  original  nord  and  its  trans- 
lated representative  is,  in  thousands  of  instances,  not  annular ; 
the  centres  do  not  coincide  ;  the  nords  overlap." — An  English 
Mail  Coach. 

"The  town  of  L represented  the  earth,  with  its  sorrows 

and  its  graves  left  behind,  yet  not  out  of  sight,  nor  wholly  forgot- 
ten. The  ocean  in  everlasting  but  gentle  agitation,  and  brooded 
over  by  dove-like  calm,  might  not  unfitly  typify  the  mind  and 
the  mood  which  then  swayed  it." — Autobiography. 

"  In  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  at  a  sudden  summons,  as  it  were 
from  the  sounding  of  a  trumpet,  or  the  oriental  call  by  the 
clapping  of  hands,  gates  are  thrown  open,  which  have  an  effect 
corresponding  in  grandeur  to  the  effect  that  would  arise  from 
the  opening  of  a  ship-canal  across  the  Isthmu^  of  Darien,  viz., 
the  introduction  to  each  other — face  to  face — of  two  separate  in- 
finities. Such  a  canal  would  suddenly  lay  open  to  each  other 
the  two  great  oceans  of  our  planet,  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  ; 
while  the  act  of  translating  into  Greek  and/ram  Hebrew,  that  is, 
transferring  out  of  a  mysterious  cipher  as  little  accessible  as 
Sanscrit,  and  which  never  -would  be  more  accessible  through  any 
worldly  attractions  of  alliance  with  power  and  civic  grandeur  of 
commerce,  out  of  this  darkness  into  the  golden  light  of  a  lan- 
guage the  most  beautiful,  etc." — On  the  Supposed  Scriptural 
Expression  for  Eternity. 


10.    Profound    Religious     Faith  — Reverence. — 

"  De  Quincey  is  a  Christian  on  epicurean  principles.  He 
dislikes  an  infidel  because  his  repose  is  disturbed  by  the 
arguments  of  free-thinkers. " — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  De  Quincey  is  distinctly  and  avowedly  a  Christian." 
— H.  Giles. 

"  We  find  a  profound  and  sincere  religious  feeling.     .     .     . 


4l6  DE   QUINCEY 

As  a  moralist,  De  Quincey  takes  his  stand  upon  Christianity, 
and  his  whole  system  of  belief  is  built  upon  it.  He  is  a  sin- 
cere Christian  believer,  without  compromise  or  reserve.  He 
everywhere  extols  the  Christian  religion,  and  is  jealous  for  its 
character  and  sanctity. " — C.  C.  Smith. 

11  With  all  his  errors,  De  Quincey  has  not  ceased  to  believe 
in  Christianity." — Harper1  s  Magazine. 

"  De  Quincey  ever  shows  himself  a  believer  in  revealed 
religion  and  a  firm  adherent  of  the  Established  Church."  — 
Christian  Examiner. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  great  principles  of  Christian  morality  are  now  so  inter- 
woven with  our  habits  of  thinking  that  we  appeal  to  them  no 
longer  as  Scriptural  authorities  but  as  the  natural  suggestions 
of  a  sound  judgment.  For  instance,  in  the  case  of  any  wrong 
offered  to  the  Hindoo  races,  now  so  entirely  dependent  upon  our 
wisdom  and  justice,  we  British  immediately,  by  our  solemnity  of 
investigation,  testify  our  sense  of  the  deep  responsibility  to  India 
with  which  our  Indian  supremacy  has  invested  us.  We  make  no 
mention  of  the  Christian  oracles.  Yet  where,  then,  have  we 
learned  this  doctrine  of  far-stretching  responsibility  ?  In  all 
Pagan  systems  of  morality  there  is  not  the  vaguest  and  slightest 
appreciation  of  such  relations  as  connect  us  with  our  colonies. 
But  from  the  profound  philosophy  of  Scripture  we  have  learned 
that  no  relations  whatever,  not  even  those  of  property,  can  con- 
nect us  with  even  a  brute  animal  but  that  we  contract  concurrent 
obligations  of  justice  and  mercy." — Essay  on  Christianity. 

"  All  false  religions  have  perished  by  their  own  hollowness  and 
by  internal  decay,  under  the  searching  trials  applied  by  life  and 
the  changes  of  life,  by  social  mechanism  and  the  changes  of  social 
mechanism,  which  wait  in  ambush  upon  every  mode  of  religion. 
False  modes  of  religion  could  not  respond  to  the  demands  ex- 
acted from  them  or  the  questions  emerging.  One  after  one  they 
have  collapsed,  as  if  by  palsy,  and  have  sunk  away  under  new 
aspects  of  society  and  new  necessities  of  man  which  they  were  not 
able  to  face.  Commencing  in  one  condition  of  society,  in  one 
set  of  feelings,  and  in  one  system  of  ideas,  they  sank  instinc- 


DE   QUINCEY  417 

lively  under  any  great  change  in  these  elements,  to  which  they 
had  no  natural  power  of  plastic  self-accommqdation.  A  false 
religion  furnished  always  a  key  to  one  subordinate  lock ;  but  a 
religion  that  is  true  will  prove  a  master-key  for  all  locks  alike. 
This  transcendental  principle,  through  which  Christianity  trans- 
ers  herself  so  readily  from  climate  to  climate,  from  land  to  land, 
from  century  to  century,  from  the  simplicity  of  shepherds  to  the 
utmost  refinement  of  philosophers,  carries  with  it  a  correspond- 
ing necessity  (corresponding,  I  mean,  to  such  infinite  flexibility) 
of  an  infinite  development." — Essay  on  Protestantism. 

"  How  grand  a  triumph,  if,  even  then,  amidst  the  raving  of  all 
around  him  and  the  frenzy  of  the  danger,  the  man  is  able  to  con- 
front his  situation — is  able  to  retire  for  a  moment  into  solitude 
with  God  and  to  seek  his  counsel  from  Him." — The  English 
Mail  Coach. 

II.  Originality — Independence. — "The  originality, 
the  independence  of  his  exposition  is  in  every  case  the  most 
remarkable  part  of  it.  You  have  the  subject  treated  at  first 
hand." — S.  H.  Hodgson. 

"  He  had  the  independence  of  a  true  critic.  ...  He 
brings  to  light  and  to  being  that  which  is  his  own.  He  fol- 
lows here  the  guidance  of  no  master." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

11  Few,  if  any,  have  the  indefinable  quality  of  freshness  in  so 
large  a  measure." — Saintsbury. 

"Of  his  multifarious  writings  all  are  strongly  marked  by 
the  individuality  of  the  author." — S.  Davey. 

"  It  is  rare  to  find  an  author  whose  works  seem  to  bear  more 
truly  and  clearly  the  stamp  of  his  own  mind,  and  whose  judg- 
ments— moral,  political,  and  literary — are  set  down  with  less 
apparent  reference  to  the  opinions  of  contemporaries." — 
G.  G.  Brown. 

"No  one  can  better  develop  the  utmost  possibility  of  a 
musty  adage,  a  threadbare  proverb,  a  flavorless  bit  of  slang, 
or  a  joke  that  has  seen  better  days." — Littell 's  Living  Age, 
from  the  Press. 

"  He  was  as  original  a  thinker  as  most  men  are  who  take 
27 


418  DE   QUINCEY 

comparatively  little  for  granted  and  who  inquire  before  they 
conclude." — B:  A.  Page. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"War  stands,  or  seems  to  stand,  upon  the  double  basis  of 
necessity  ;  a  primary  necessity  that  belongs  to  our  human  degra- 
dations, a  secondary  one  that  towers  by  means  of  its  moral  rela- 
tions into  the  region  of  our  impassioned  grandeurs.  The  two 
propositions  on  which  I  take  my  stand  are  these  :  first,  that 
there  are  nowhere  latent  in  society  any  powers  by  which  it  can 
effectually  operate  a  war  for  its  extermination.  The  machinery  is 
not  there.  The  game  is  not  within  the  compass  of  the  cards. 
Secondly,  that  this  defect  of  power  is  not  a  curse,  but  on  the 
whole  a  blessing  from  century  to  century,  if  it  is  an  inconvenience 
from  year  to  year.  The  Abolition  Committees,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
will  be  angry  at  both  propositions.  Yet,  gentlemen,  hear  me — 
strike,  but  hear  me.  That's  a  sort  of  plagiarism  from  The- 
mistocles.  But  never  mind.  I  have  as  good  a  right  to  the  words, 
until  translated  back  into  Greek,  as  that  most  classical  of  yellow 
admirals.  I  protest  that  I  should  have  used  these  words  even 
if  Themistocles  had  absconded  into  Scythia  in  his  boyhood." 
— Essay  on  War. 

"My  own  impressions  incline  me  to  represent  the  earth  as  a 
fine,  noble  young  woman,  full  of  the  pride  which  is  so  becoming 
to  her  sex,  and  well  able  to  take  her  own  part,  in  case  that,  at 
any  solitary  part  of  the  heavens,  she  should  come  across  one  of 
those  vulgar,  fussy  comets  disposed  to  be  rude  and  take  improper 
liberties.  But  others  there  are,  a  class  whom  I  perfectly  abom- 
inate, that  place  our  earth  in  the  category  of  decaying,  nay,  of 
decayed  women.  Hair  like  arctic  snows,  failure  of  vital  heat, 
palsy  that  shakes  the  head  as  in  the  porcelain  toys  on  our  mantel- 
pieces, asthma  that  shakes  the  whole  fabric — these  they  abso- 
lutely fancy  themselves  to  see;  they  absolutely  hear  the  tellurian 
lungs  wheezing,  panting,  crying,  '  Bellows  to  mend  ! '  periodi- 
cally as  the  earth  approaches  her  aphelion.'' — Essay  on  System 
of  the  Heavens. 

12.  Insight  into  Character. — "He  had  an  extraor- 
dinary insight  into  practical  human  life ;  not  merely  in  the 


DE   QUINCEY  419 

abstract,  but  in  the  concrete ;  not  merely  as  a  philosopher  of 
human  nature,  but  as  one  who  saw  into  those  who  passed  him 
in  the  walk  of  life  with  the  kind  of  intuition  attributed  to  ex- 
pert detectives." — Burton. 

"  While  it  was  a  peculiarity  of  his  intellect  to  be  exquisitely 
introspective,  he  was  yet  marvellously  swift  in  his  appreciation 
of  men  and  things." — William  Mathews. 

"  He  had  that  mental  acumen  which  found  such  fitting  ex- 
ercise in  the  study  of  men." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Knowing  that  she  would  reap  nothing  from  answering  her 
persecutors,  why  did  she  not  retire  by  silence  from  the  superflu- 
ous contest  ?  It  was  because  her  quick  and  eager  loyalty  to  truth 
would  not  suffer  her  to  see  it  darkened  by  frauds  which  she  could 
expose.  ...  It  was  through  that  imperishable  grandeur  of 
soul  which  taught  her  to  submit  meekly  and  without  a  struggle  to 
her  punishment,  but  taught  her  not  to  submit — no,  not  for  a  mo- 
ment— to  qalumny  as  to  facts  or  to  misconstruction  as  to  mo- 
tives."—Joan  of  Arc. 

"  It  is  unintelligibly  but  mesmerically  potent,  this  secret  fasci- 
nation attached  to  features  oftentimes  that  are  absolutely  plain  ; 
and  as  one  of  many  cases  within  my  own  range  of  positive  experi- 
ence, I  remember,  in  confirmation,  at  this  moment,  that  in  a 
clergyman's  family,  counting  three  daughters,  all  on  a  visit  to  my 

mother,  the  youngest  Miss  F P ,  who  was  strikingly  and 

memorably  plain,  never  walked  out  on  the  Clifton  Downs  unat- 
tended but  she  was  followed  home  by  a  crowd  of  admiring  men, 
anxious  to  learn  her  rank  and  abode  ;  whilst  the  middle  sister, 
eminently  handsome,  levied  no  such  visible  tribute  on  the  public  ; 
I  mention  this  fact — one  of  a  thousand  similar  facts — simply  by 
way  of  reminding  the  reader  of  what  he  must  himself  have  often 
witnessed,  viz.,  that  no  woman  is  condemned  by  nature  to  any 
ignoble  necessity  of  repining  against  the  power  of  other  women  ; 
her  own  may  be  far  more  confined,  but  within  its  own  circle  may 
possibly,  measured  against  that  of  the  haughtiest  beauty,  be  the 
profounder." — Autobiography, 


MACAULAY,   1800-1859 

Biographical  Outline. — Thomas  Babington  Macaulay, 
born  at  Rothby  Temple,  Leicestershire,  October  25,  1800; 
father  a  merchant  and  publicist,  who  was  active  in  abolishing 
the  slave-trade ;  removes  to  Birchin  Lane  and,  in  Thomas's 
third  year,  to  Clapham ;  Macaulay  begins  reading  at  three, 
and  exhibits  marvellous  powers  of  memory  at  four  ;  is  petted 
by  Hannah  More;  at  seven  he  begins  a  compendium  of  uni- 
versal history,  and  at  eight  writes  a  theological  discourse  : 
memorizes  Scott's  poems  and  begins  writing  poems  and  hymns  ; 
first  attends  a  private  school  in  Clapham,  then  (in  1812)  to 
the  school  of  one  Preston,  at  Little  Shelford,  near  Cambridge; 
reads  with  astonishing  voracity  and  rapidity  ;  enters  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  in  October,  1818;  exchanges  Tory  for 
Whig  political  views  ;  wins  college  prizes  in  Latin. declama- 
tion and  in  English  poetry  ;  is  refused  college  honors  because 
of  his  dislike  for  mathematics  ;  is  made  a  fellow  of  Trinity  in 
October,  1824;  takes  private  pupils  in  1823,  because  of  his 
father's  business  reverses ;  his  family  remove  to  London  in 
1821  ;  Macaulay  lives  with  his  parents  till  1829  ;  is  called  to 
the  bar  in  1826;  does  not  practise,  but  frequents  the  House 
of  Commons,  makes  political  speeches,  and  writes  for  the  mag- 
azines; first  contributes  to  Knighf  s  Quarterly  Magazine  an 
article  on  "  Ivry  and  the  Armada;"  in  August,  1825,  pub- 
lishes in  the  Edinburgh  Review  his  essay  on  Milton,  which 
is  highly  praised  by  Jeffrey  ;  is  offered  the  editorship  of  the 
Edinburgh  Review  on  Jeffrey's  retirement,  but  declines;  his 
other  essays,  twenty-six  in  number,  appear  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  from  1825  to  1844  ;  is  made  a  Commissioner  in  Bank- 
ruptcy in  1828,  by  Lord  Lyndhurst,  a  political  opponent; 

420 


MACAULAY  421 

this,  with  his  fellowship  and  his  receipts  from  the  Review, 
give  him  an  income  of  ^£900  ;  he  is  elected  a  member  of 
Parliament  for  Calne  in  1830;  wins  great  fame  by  a  speech 
on  the  second  reading  of  the  Reform  Bill  in  1831  ;  is  courted 
by  Sydney  Smith,  Hallam,  and  other  literary  celebrities ;  by 
the  abolition  of  his  commissionership  and  the  expiration  of  his 
fellowship  Macaulay  is  reduced  to  selling  his  university  gold 
medals ;  he  engages  in  controversy  with  J.  W.  Croker ;  is 
made  a  Commissioner  of  the  Board  of  Control  [of  Indian 
affairs]  in  1832,  and  soon  afterward  becomes  secretary  of  the 
board;  continues  in  Parliament,  representing  Leeds;  although 
needing  the  income  as  commissioner  to  help  pay  his  father's 
debts,  Macaulay  resigns  his  office  so  as  to  be  free  to  oppose  a 
government  bill  for  apprenticing  liberated  slaves ;  his  resigna- 
tion is  not  accepted  ;  he  is  offered  a  seat  in  the  Supreme  Coun- 
cil of  India,  at  ^10,000  a  year  for  five  years ;  he  accepts  only 
on  condition  that  his  sister  Hannah  shall  accompany  him  to 
India  ;  sails  for  India  in  February,  1834  ;  resides  at  Calcutta 
till  December,  1838,  when  he  returns  to  England;  is  made 
president  of  a  committee  which  founds  the  educational  system 
of  India  ;  prepares,  also,  a  criminal  code  for  India,  which  was 
published  in  December,  1837  ;  his  penal  code  became  law  in 
1860  ;  meantime  Macaulay  reads  a  vast  amount  of  classical 
literature,  and  learns  German  on  his  homeward  voyage  ;  on 
arriving  he  is  challenged  to  a  duel  by  one  Wallace,  whose  life 
of  Mclntosh  Macaulay  had  condemned  in  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
view ;  Macaulay  accepts  the  challenge,  but  friends  arrange  a 
bloodless  settlement ;  he  makes  a  tour  of  Italy  in  the  autumn 
of  1838,  and  receives  impressions  for  his  "Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome;"  returns  to  London,  and  begins  his  "History  of 
England  "  in  March,  1839  ;  is  elected  to  Parliament  for 
Edinburgh  in  1839,  and  becomes  Secretary  of  War  in  Sep- 
tember of  that  year ;  till  1841  he  lives  in  London  with  Sir 
George  Trevelyan,  who  had  married  Macaulay's  sister  Han- 
nah ;  he  is  reluctantly  forced  to  publish  his  essays  in  1843,  as 


422  MACAULAY 

Americans  had  already  published  them  ;  the  annual  sales  of  the 
essays  reach  6,000  by  1864;  publishes  his  "  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome  "  in  1842  ;  18,000  copies  are  sold  during  the  first  ten 
years  ;  in  1841—42  Macaulay  advocates  and  secures  important 
changes  in  the  law  of  copyright ;  he  advocates  the  repeal  of  the 
corn-laws;  is  made  Paymaster-General  in  1846,  and  is  re- 
elected  for  Edinburgh ;  is  defeated  at  the  Edinburgh  election  of 
1847  because  of  his  approval  of  the  Established  Church  and  his 
independent  views  in  general ;  he  declines  further  participation 
in  politics  and  devotes  himself  to  literature  ;  the  first  two  vol- 
umes of  his  "  History  "  appear  in  November,  1848  ;  13,000 
copies  are  sold  the  first  four  months ;  he  is  ordained  Lord  Rec- 
tor of  the  University  of  Glasgow  in  March,  1849;  declines 
the  professorship  of  Modern  History  at  Cambridge ;  declines 
a  Cabinet  position  in  1852  ;  his  health  suddenly  and  seriously 
fails  ;  makes  his  last  speech  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  July, 
1853  ;  prepares  civil-service  rules  and  examinations  for  India 
in  1854;  publishes  the  third  volume  of  his  "History"  in 
December,  1855  ;  26,500  copies  are  sold  during  the  first  ten 
weeks;  the  "History"  is  at  once  translated  into  twelve 
languages,  and  in  March,  1856,  Macaulay  receives  from  his 
publishers  royalties  amounting  to  ^20,000  ;  he  buys  and  set- 
tles at  Holly  Lodge,  Kensington,  in  1856  ;  accepts  a  peerage  in 
1857  ;  is  made  high  steward  of  the  borough  of  Cambridge  in 
1857  ;  continues  work  upon  his  "History,"  and  contributes 
several  articles  to  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica ;  "  dies  at 
Holly  Lodge,  December  28,  1859,  and  is  buried  in  Westmin- 
ster Abbey;  the  fifth  volume  of  the  "History,"  edited  by 
Lady  Trevelyan,  appeared  in  1861. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON   MACAULAY'S  STYLE. 

Saintsbury,  G.,  "Impressions."     New  York,  1895,  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co., 

79-98. 
Oliphant,  Mrs.,    "Victorian  Age  of  English  Literature."     New  York, 

1892,  Tail,  H9-I97- 


MACAULAY  423 

Minto,  W.,  "English  Prose."     Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood,  87-130. 
Stirling,  J.  H.,  "Jerrold,  Tennyson,  and  Macaulay."    Edinburgh,  1868, 

Edmonston  &  Douglas,  112-172. 
Pebody,  C,  "Authors  at  Work."     London,  1872,  W.   H.  Allen,    208- 

246. 
Jones,  C.  H.,  "Macaulay,  His  Life  and  Writings."     New  York,  1880, 

Appleton,  229-247. 

Lancaster,  H.  H.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."     Edinburgh,  1876,  Edmon- 
ston &  Douglas,  178-229. 
Mason,  E.  T.,  "  Personal  Traits  of  British  Authors."     New  York,  1885, 

Scribner,  4:   33-81. 
Stevens,  A.,  "Character  Sketches."    New  York,  1882,  Phillips  &  Hunt, 

53-107. 
Russell,  A.  P.,  "Characteristics."     Boston,  1893,  Houghton,  Mirflin  & 

Co.,  74-105. 
Russell,   W.   C.,    "The  Book  of  Authors."     London,    1879,  Warne  & 

Co.,  469-472. 
Skelton,  J.,    "Essays  in  History  and  Biography."     Edinburgh,    1883, 

Blackwood,  279-283. 
Stephen,   L.,  "Hours  in  a  Library."      New  York,    1894,    Putnam,   3: 

343-376. 

Collier,  W.  F.,  "  History  of  English  Literature."     London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 461-467. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893, 

Appleton,  412-420. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  2:  301-309. 
Taine,    H.   A.,    "History  of   English    Literature."     New  York,    1875, 

Holt,  3  :  256-294. 
Stephen,  L.,  "Dictionary  of  National   Biography."     New  York,  1890, 

Macmillan,  34 :  410-418. 
Henley,  W.   E.,  "Views  and  Reviews."      New  York,  1890,   Scribner, 

1 6. 

Home,  R.   H.,  "A  New  Spirit  of  the  Age."     New  York,  1844,  Har- 
per, 2 1 1-22 1. 

Grimm,  H.,  "  Literature."     Boston,  1886,  Cupples  &  Co.,  130-168. 
Bayne,     P.,    "Essays  in    Biography    and  Criticism."      Boston,    1858, 

Gould  &  Lincoln,  2  :   52-85. 
Gilfillan,  G.,  "Literary  Portraits."     Edinburgh,  1851,  J.  Hogg,  i:  262- 

271;  2:  81-100;  3:  278-313. 
Whipple,  E.   P.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."     Boston,  1861,   Ticknor,   i: 

9-31- 


424  MACAULAY 

Bagehot,  W.,  "Literary   Studies."     Hartford,    1856,   Travellers'   Insur- 
ance Company,  2  :   58-99. 
Martineau,   H.,   "Biographical   Sketches."     New  York,  1876,  Leopold 

&  Holt,  102-113. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  "Atlas  Essays."     New  York,  1877,  Banks,  2:   1-14. 
Morley,  J.,  "English  Men  of  Letters"  (Morrison).    New  York,  1882, 

Harper,  38-65. 
Spedding,  J.,  "  Evenings  with  a  Reviewer."     Boston,  1882,  Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  v.  index.,  2  vols. 
Trevelyan,  G.  O.,  "Life  and  Letters  of  Macaulay. "     New  York,  1876, 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1 :    1-465  ;  ~2  :    1-480. 
Punshon,  W.  M.,  "  Life  of  Macaulay"  (Exeter  Hall  Lectures).    Boston, 

1873,  Estes  &  Lauriat,  39-97. 
Anton,  P.,  "Masters  in  History."     Edinburgh,  1880,  Macmillan,  121- 

194. 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  "  Gleanings, "  etc.      New   York,   1879,   Scribner,  2: 

265-341. 
Kebbel,  T.  E.,  "Essays  upon  History  and  Politics."     London,    1864, 

Chapman  &  Hall,  30. 
Morley,  J.,   "Critical  Miscellanies."     New  York,  1893,  Macmillan,   i: 

253-293- 

Fortnightly  Review,  25  ;  494-514  (J.  Morley). 

Quarterly  Review,  142:  1-50  (Trevelyan);  124:  1-50  and  287-333 
(Trevelyan);  71:  453-47«- 

Harper's  Magazine,  53;  85-97  and  238-244  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 

Princeton  Review,  12:   431-451  (J.  M.  Alexander). 

Belgravia,  29  :    397-410  (T.  H.  S.  Escott). 

Debow's  Magazine,  28  :  667-679  (G.  Fitzhugh). 

Macmillan 's  Magazine,  I:  241-247  (F.  D.  Maurice)  ;  34:  85-97  (Mor- 
rison) ;  i:  287-298  (H.  Moore). 

Methodist  Quarterly,  37 :    197-225  (A.  Stevens). 

Saturday  Review,  9  :    9-10. 

Littelfs  Living  Age,  64:  506-509  (Saturday  Review};  37:  323-340 
{Chambers' s  Repository). 

Eclectic  Magazine,  \<$:  505-509  (Hannah  More);  51:  145-161  (J.  A. 
Froude)  ;  13  :  35-46  (G.  Gilfillan). 

Eraser's  Magazine,  62  :  438-446  (J.  Skelton) ;  33 :  77-85  ;  62  :  438-446 
(Shirley) ;  103  :  187-196  (E.  Myers) ;  33  :  77-84. 

Spectator,  66:    337-338. 

Edinburgh  Review,  100:    252-275. 

Blacfcivood's  Magazine,  86 :    162-174. 

Eclectic  Review,  3  :   273-276. 


MACAULAY  425 

Cornhill  Magazine,  i:    129-134. 

Forum,  18  :   80-94  (F.  Harrison). 

Motion,  56:  16-17  (W.  C.  Sydney);  22:  337~338  and  352-353  (A.  V. 

Dicey). 

North  American  AVrvVa1,  93:   418-456  (C.  C.  Smith). 
North  British  Review,  25:  41-58;   33:  229-247  (H.  H.  Lancaster). 

I.  Fondness  for   Contrast  —  Balance  —  Point  — 

Epigram. — "Macaulay  delights  to  leave  us  face  to  face 
with  contrasts.  He  likes  to  represent  a  man  as  a  bundle  of 
contradictions,  because  it  enables  him  to  obtain  startling 
results." — Leslie  Stephen. 

1 '  He  makes  considerable  use  of  the  conventional  balanced 
phrases  for  amplifying  the  roll  of  a  sentence.  .  .  .  His 
pages  are  illuminated  not  only  by  little  sparks  of  antithe- 
sis but  by  broad  flashes.  Not  only  is  word  set  off  against 
word,  clause  against  clause,  and  sentence  against  sentence ; 
one  group  of  sentences  answers  another,  and  paragraphs  are 
balanced  against  paragraphs.  ...  A  favorite  and  char- 
acteristic way  of  getting  up  an  antithesis  is,  before  narrating 
an  event,  to  recount  all  the  circumstances  that  concurred  to 
make  it  different  from  what  it  ultimately  proved  to  be. 
Another  favorite  device  is  in  the  course  of  his  narrative  to 
speculate  what  might  have  happened  had  circumstances  been 
different.  ...  A  large  portion  of  his  sentences  contain 
words  and  clauses  in  formal  balance.  .  .  .  Passages 
show  balance  combined  with  antithesis.  .  .  .  The  strik- 
ing characteristic  of  abruptness  in  Macaulay's  style  is  caused 
chiefly  by  his  way  of  transition  and  connection.  We  are 
constantly  being  jerked  from  the  immediate  subject  and  back 
again  with  a  'but.'  .  .  .  Very  often  all  the  sentences 
up  to  the  last  are  a  preparation  for  the  shock  of  astonishment 
administered  at  the  close.  He  likes  to  occupy  the  first  sen- 
tences of  the  paragraph  with  circumstances  leading  us  to 
expect  the  opposite  of  what  is  really  the  main  statement. 
.  .  .  A  preference  is  given  to  flash  and  startling  facts — to 


426  MACAULAY 

material  that  is  good  for  pictures  and  for  dazzling  paradoxes. 
The  scintillations  of  antithesis  are  almost  incessant." — Minto. 

"  As  nimble  and  concise  in  wit  as  Sydney  Smith,     .     . 
the  wonderful  clearness,  point,  and  vigor  of  his  style  send  his 
thoughts  right  into  every  brain.     .     .     .     His  spice  is  of 
so  keen  a  flavor  that  it  tickles  the  coarsest  palate. 
Common  historical  events  he  narrates  with  all  the  brilliancy 
of  epigram. ' ' —  Walter  Bagehot. 

"  He  delights  to  cram  tomes  of  diluted  facts  into  one  short, 
sharp  antithetical  sentence  and  to  condense  general  principles 
into  epigrams.  .  .  .  His  words  overflow  with  anti- 
thetical forms  of  expression  and  thoughts  condensed  into 
sparkling  epigrams.  His  page  is  brightened  by  them,  gleam- 
ing over  the  discussion  of  a  question  of  taste  like  incessant 
flashes  of  heat-lightning — thrown  off  like  glittering  sparks  in 
the  rush  of  his  declamatory  logic." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

11  Macaulay's  style  was  like  Pope's  .  .  .  artificial  by 
nature;  deficient  in  flexibility  and  compass,  as  inferior  to 
Burke  as  Pope  was  to  Dryden ;  below  Johnson  in  elegance 
and  below  Hume  in  combination  of  strength,  polish,  and 
simplicity,  he  had  something  which  all  three  wanted,  and 
has  in  consequence  had  a  thousand  readers  for  every  one  of 
theirs.  .  .  .  No  one  of  these  writers  ever  leaves  us  at  a 
loss  for  his  meaning,  but  they  do  not  pointedly  call  attention 
to  it.  ...  We  cannot  read  a  page  of  his  work  without 
finding  ourselves  continually  laying  stress  upon  particular 
words,  whether  we  will  or  no.  To  such  perfection  has  he 
carried  this  practice  that  he  seldom  or  never  stands  in  need 
of  italics,  and  his  argument  remains  impressed  upon  the  mind 
like  a  clearly  marked  tune  upon  the  memory.  So  much  in- 
deed is  this  the  case  that  in  his  later  writings  his  style  not  un- 
frequently  degenerates  into  a  mere  jig." — 7!  £.  Kebbel. 


MACAULAY  427 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  We  charge  him  with  having  broken  his  coronation  oath  ;  and 
we  are  told  that  he  kept  his  marriage  vow  !  We  accuse  him  of  hav- 
ing given  up  his  people  to  the  merciless  inflictions  of  the  most  hot- 
headed and  hard-hearted  of  prelates,  and  the  defense  is,  that  he 
took  his  little  son  on  his  knee  and  kissed  him." — Essay  on  Milton. 

"  Among  statesmen  of  the  age  Halifax  was,  in  genius,  the  first. 
His  intellect  was  fertile,  subtle,  capacious.  His  polished,  lumi- 
nous, and  animated  eloquence  set  off  by  the  silver  tones  of  his 
voice  was  the  delight  of  the  House  of  Lords.  His  conversation 
overflowed  with  thought,  fancy,  and  wit.  Yet  he  was  less  suc- 
cessful in  politics  than  many  who  enjoyed  smaller  advantages." 
— Essay  on  Bacon. 

"  He  applied  to  the  government ;  and  it  seems  strange  that  he 
should  have  applied  in  vain.  His  wishes  were  moderate.  He- 
reditary claims  on  the  administration  were  great.  He  had  him- 
self been  favorably  noticed  by  the  Queen.  His  uncle  was  Prime 
Minister.  His  own  talents  were  such  as  any  minister  might  have 
been  eager  to  enlist  in  the  public  service.  But  his  solicitations 
were  unsuccessful.  The  truth  is  that  the  Cecils  disliked  him  and 
did  all  that  they  could  decently  do  to  keep  him  down." — Essay 
on  Bacon. 

"  This  great  commander  [Lord  Galway]  conducted  the  cam- 
paign of  1707  in  the  most  scientific  manner.  On  the  plain  of 
Almanza  he  encountered  the  army  of  the  Bourbons.  He  drew  up 
his  troops  according  to  the  methods  prescribed  by  the  best 
writers,  and  in  a  few  hours  lost  eighteen  thousand  men,  a  hun- 
dred and  twenty  standards,  all  his  baggage,  and  all  his  artillery." 
—  War  of  the  Succession  in  Spain. 

"  Melville  was  not  a  great  statesman  :  he  was  not  a  great  ora- 
tor :  he  did  not  look  or  move  like  the  representative  of  royalty  : 
his  character  was  not  of  more  than  standard  purity  :  and  the 
standard  of  purity  among  Scottish  senators  was  not  high  :  but  he 
was  by  no  means  deficient  in  prudence  and  temper :  and  he  suc- 
ceeded, on  the  whole,  better  than  a  man  of  much  higher  qualities 
might  have  done." — History  of  England. 

2.  Profuse  Repetition. — "  It  seems  as  if  he  were  mak- 
ing a  wager  with  his  reader  and  said  to  him  :  '  Be  as  absent 


428  MACAULAY 

in  mind  as  you  will,  as  stupid,  as  ignorant ;  in  vain  you  will 
be  ignorant,  you  shall  learn ;  I  will  repeat  the  same  idea  in 
so  many  forms.'  '  — Taine. 

"  [He  has]  a  profuse  way  of  repeating  a  thought  in  several 
different  sentences.  .  .  .  His  ideal  is  evidently  to  turn  a 
subject  over  on  every  side,  to  place  it  in  all  lights." — Minto. 

"  He  remembers  that  he  has  not  only  to  exhibit  his  proofs, 
but  to  hammer  them  into  the  heads  of  his  audience  by  incessant 
repetition.  .  .  .  He  goes  on  ^blacking  the  chimney  with 
a  persistency  which  somehow  amuses  us  because  he  puts  so 
much  heart  into  his  work." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  The  style  of  Macaulay  is  a  diorama  of  political  pictures. 
You  seem  to  begin  with  a  brilliant  picture — its  colors  are  dis- 
tinct, its  lines  are  firm ;  on  a  sudden  it  changes,  at  first  gradu- 
ally, you  can  scarcely  see  how  or  in  what,  but  truly  and  un- 
mistakably— a  slightly  different  picture  is  before  you  ;  then  the 
second  vision  seems  to  change — it  too  is  another  and  yet  the 
same ;  then  the  third  shines  forth  and  fades  :  and  so  without 
end.  The  unity  of  this  delineation  is  the  identity — the  ap- 
parent identity  of  the  picture — in  no  two  moments  does  it  seem 
quite  different,  in  no  two  is  it  identically  the  same." — Walter 
Bagehot. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  That  these  practices  were  common  we  admit.  But  they  were 
common  just  as  all  wickedness  to  which  there  is  a  strong  tempta- 
tion always  was  and  always  will  be  common.  They  were  common 
just  as  theft,  cheating,  perjury,  adultery  have  always  been  com- 
mon. They  were  common,  not  because  people  did  not  know 
what  was  right,  but  because  people  liked  to  do  what  was  wrong. 
They  were  common  though  prohibited  by  law.  They  were  com- 
mon though  condemned  by  public  opinion.  They  were  common 
because  in  that  age  law  and  public  opinion  had  not  sufficient  force 
to  restrain  the  greediness  of  powerful  and  unprincipled  magis- 
trates. They  were  common  as  every  crime  will  be  common 
when  the  gain  to  which  it  leads  is  great  and  the  chance  of  punish- 
ment small." — History  of  England. 


MACAULAY  429 

"  Thus  was  it  with  that  famous  assembly.  They  formed  a 
force  which  they  could  neither  govern  nor  resist.  They  made  it 
powerful.  They  made  it  fanatical.  As  if  military  insolence  were 
not  of  itself  sufficiently  dangerous,  they  heightened  it  with  spirit- 
ual pride  ;  they  encouraged  the  soldiers  to  rave  from  the  tops  of 
tubs  against  the  men  of  Belial  till  every  trooper  thought  himself 
a  prophet.  They  taught  them  to  abuse  popery  till  every  drum- 
mer fancied  that  he  was  as  infallible  as  a  pope." — Essay  on  Milton. 

"  Pitt  was  emphatically  the  man  of  parliamentary  government, 
the  type  of  his  class,  the  minion,  the  child,  the  spoiled  child,  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  For  the  House  of  Commons  he  had  a 
hereditary,  an  infantine  love.  Through  his  whole  boyhood,  the 
House  of  Commons  was  never  out  of  his  thoughts  or  out  of  the 
thoughts  of  his  instructors  ;  ...  he  was  constantly  in  train- 
ing for  the  conflicts  of  the  House  of  Commons.  He  was  a  dis- 
tinguished member  of  the  House  of  Commons  at  twenty-one. 
The  ability  which  he  displayed  in  the  House  of  Commons  made 
him  the  most  powerful  subject  in  Europe  before  he  was  twenty- 
five,  etc." — Essay  on  William  Pitt. 

3.  Rapidity — Profusion — Erudition. — "  This  abun- 
dance of  thought  and  style,  this  multitude  of  explanations, 
ideas  and  facts,  this  vast  aggregate  of  historical  knowledge, 
goes  rolling  on,  urged  forward  by  an  internal  passion,  sweep- 
ing away  objections  in  its  course,  and  adding  to  the  dash  of 
eloquence  the  irresistible  force  of  its  mass  and  weight." — 
Taine. 

"  Take  at  hazard  any  three  pages,  and  you  see 
one,  two,  three,  a  half  dozen,  a  score  of  allusions  to  other  his- 
toric facts,  characters,  literature,  and  poetry  with  which  you 
are  acquainted.  .  .  .  He  reads  twenty  books  to  write 
a  sentence ;  he  travels  a  hundred  miles  to  make  a  line  of  de- 
scription.' ' — Thackeray. 

"There  is  a  fulness  and  a  rapid  continuance  of  utterance 

that  hurry  us  triumphantly  along  the  stream  of  expression. 

.     The  swiftness  of  its  speed  is  as  the  rush  of  the  eager 

victor  through   the   broken   wreck  of  the  terrified  foe  that 


430  MACAULAY 

flees.     ...     [It  is]   transparent   but   flushed    rapidity." 
— /.  H.  Stirling. 

"Knowledge  and  important  principles  generalized  from 
knowledge  are  scattered  with  careless  ease  and  prodigality,  as 
though  they  would  hardly  be  missed  in  the  fulness  of  mind  from 
which  they  proceed.  .  .  .  The  most  gorgeous  trappings 
of  his  rhetoric  are  radiant  with  thought." — Walter  Bagehot. 

"  He  has  gathered  only  those  flowers  that  grow  far  out  of 
the  common  path,  in  the  by-ways  of  history  and  poetry — and 
these  he  scatters  over  his  pages  with  what  might  be  called  an 
elaborate  carelessness  and  profusion.  .  .  .  His  pictures 
float  past  the  reader  like  the  cumulus  clouds  of  a  summer's 
day,  clear,  swiftly  flying,  and  touched  with  the  loveliest  hues." 
— Peter  Bayne, 

"Hastings'  trial  is  a  picture  .  .  .  which  in  its  thick 
and  crowded  magnificence  reminds  you  of  the  descriptions  of 
Tacitus,  or  (singular  connection  !)  of  the  paintings  of  Ho- 
garth. As  in  Hogarth,  the  variety  of  figures  and  circum- 
stance each  and  all  bear  upon  the  main  object,  to  which  they 
point  like  fingers.  .  .  .  His  papers  are  thickly  studded 
with  facts." — George  Gilfillan. 

"  The  author  has  weighted  himself  with  a  load  of  minute 
detail  such  as  no  historian  ever  uplifted  before." — -J.  C.  Mor- 
rison. 

"  Quotations  from  obscure  writers  or  from  obscure  works  of 
great  writers  ;  multitudinous  allusions  to  ancient  classics  or  to 
modern  authors  whom  his  mention  has  gone  far  to  make 
classics;  references  to  some  less-studied  book  of  Scripture  ; 
names  which  have  driven  us  to  the  Atlas  to  make  sure  of  our 
geography,  or  to  the  Biographical  Gallery  to  remind  us  that 
they  lived — they  crowd  upon  us  so  thickly  that  we  are  bewil- 
dered in  the  profusion,  and  there  is  danger  to  our  physical 
symmetry  from  the  enlargement  of  our  bump  of  wonder." 
— Morley  Punshon. 

"There  is  a  certain  music,  but  it   is  the  music  of  a  man 


MACAULAY  43 1 

everlastingly  playing  for  us  rapid  solos  on  a  silver  trumpet, 
never  the  swelling  diapason  of  the  organ,  never  the  deep 
ecstatics  of  the  four  magic  strings.  .  .  .  He  revels  in 
bold  assertion,  gratuitous  assumption,  ingenious  illustration, 
brilliant  rhetoric,  and  eloquent  declamation.  With  these  he 
confuses,  confounds,  captivates,  overpowers,  and  carries  along 
his  readers.  He  so  excites  their  admiration  as  to  disqualify 
them  for  cool  and  deliberate  reflection.  He  dethrones  their 
judgment  and  enthrones  their  passions  and  prejudices.  He  is 
irresistible  on  first  reading.  His  splendid  paradoxes,  his  bold- 
ness, his  audacity,  his  very  outrageousness,  hurry  us  along  and 
leave  no  time  for  thought  or  criticism.  ...  A  large 
portion  of  the  wide  historic  realm  is  traversed  in  that  ample 
flight  of  reference,  allusion,  and  illustration ;  and  what  unspar- 
ing copiousness  of  knowledge  gives  substance,  meaning,  and 
attraction  to  that  blaze  and  glare  of  rhetoric  !  .  .  .  Fig- 
ures from  history,  ancient  and  modern,  sacred  and  secular  ; 
characters  from  plays  and  novels,  from  Plautus  down  to  Walter 
Scott  and  Jane  Austen  ;  images  and  similes  from  poets  of 
every  age  and  every  nation  ;  shrewd  thrusts  from  satirists,  wise 
saws  from  sages,  pleasantries,  caustic  and  pathetic,  from 
humourists  ;  all  through,  Macaulay's  pages  are  alive  with  the 
bustle  and  variety  and  animation  of  some  glittering  masque 
and  cosmoramic  revel  of  great  books  and  heroical  men. 
.  .  .  Macaulay's  knowledge  was  not  only  very  wide ;  it 
was  both  thoroughly  accurate  and  instantly  ready.  For  this 
stream  of  apt  illustrations  he  was  indebted  to  his  extraordi- 
nary memory  and  his  rapid  eye  for  contrasts  and  analogies. 
They  come  to  the  end  of  his  pen  as  he  writes ;  they  are  not 
laboriously  hunted  out  in  indexes  and  then  added  by  way  of 
after-thought  and  extraneous  interpolation.  Hence  quotations 
and  references  .  .  .  find  their  place  in  a  page  of  Ma- 
caulay  as  if  by  a  delightful  process  of  complete  assimilation 
and  spontaneous  fusion." — -John  Morley. 

"  His  style  was  like  a  full-blooded  steed  on  the  race-course, 


432  MACAULAY 

fleet,  direct,  and  of  simple  but  splendid  proportions.  .  .  . 
Nearly  every  one  of  his  essays  is  a  good  example  of  his  versa- 
tility, an  ample  resume  of  the  best  student's  knowledge  not 
only  of  the  character  or  subject  treated,  but  of  its  epoch,  sum- 
marized with  a  marvellous  tact  and  colored  by  an  artist's 
hand." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  His  history  is  like  a  cavalry  charge.  Down  go  horse  and 
man  before  his  rapid  and  reckless  onset.  His  '  rush  '  is  irre- 
sistible save  by  the  coolest  judgment  and  the  most  cultivated 
intellects.  Ranks  are  broken,  guns  are  spiked,  and  away 
sweeps  the  bold  dragoon  to  arrive  at  a  fresh  square." — 
T.  E.  KebbeL 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Twice,  within  the  memory  of  men  yet  living,  the  natives  had 
attempted  to  throw  off  the  alien  yoke;  twice  the  intruders  had 
been  in  imminent  danger  of  extirpation ;  twice  England  had  come 
to  the  rescue,  and  had  put  down  the  Celtic  population  under  the 
feet  of  her  own  progeny.  Millions  of  English  money  had  been 
expended  in  the  struggle.  English  blood  had  flowed  at  Boyne 
and  at  Athlone,  at  Aghrim  and  at  Limerick.  The  graves  of  thou- 
sands of  English  soldiers  had  been  dug  in  the  pestilential  morass 
of  Dundalk.  It  was  owing  to  the  exertions  and  sacrifices  of  the 
English  people  that,  from  the  basaltic  pillars  of  Ulster  to  the 
lakes  of  Kerry,  the  Saxon  settlers  were  trampling  on  the  children 
of  the  soil." — History  of  England. 

"  India  and  its  inhabitants  were  not  to  him,  as  to  most  English- 
men, mere  names  and  abstractions,  but  a  real  country  and  a  real 
people.  The  burning  sun,  the  strange  vegetation  of  the  palm 
and  the  cocoa-tree,  the  rice-field,  the  tank,  the  huge  trees,  older 
than  the  Mogul  empire,  under  which  the  village  crowds  assemble  ; 
the  thatched  roof  of  the  peasant's  hut ;  the  rich  tracery  of  the 
mosque  where  the  imaum  prays  with  his  face  to  Mecca,  the  drums 
and  banners  and  gaudy  idols,  the  devotee  swinging  in  the  air, 
the  graceful  maiden,  with  the  pitcher  on  her  head,  descending  the 
steps  to  the  riverside,  the  black  faces,  the  long  beards,  the  yellow 
streaks  of  sect,  tiie  turbans  and  the  flowing  robes,  the  spears  and 
the  silver  maces,  the  elephants  with  their  canopies  of  state,  the 
gorgeous  palanquin  of  the  prince,  all  these  things  were  to  him  as 


MACAULAY  433 

the  objects  amidst  which  his  own  life  had  been  passed."-  Essay 
on  Warren  Hastings. 

"  Such  a  prince  as  our  Henry  the  Fifth  would  have  been  the 
idol  of  the  North.  The  follies  of  his  youth,  the  selfish  ambition 
of  his  manhood,  the  Lollards  roasted  at  slow  fires,  the  prisoners 
massacred  on  the  field  of  battle,  the  expiring  lease  of  priest-craft 
renewed  for  another  century.  The  dreadful  legacy  of  a  causeless 
and  a  hopeless  war  bequeathed  to  a  people  who  had  no  interest  in 
its  event,  everything  is  forgotten  but  the  victory  of  Agincourt." 
— Essay  on  Machiavelli. 

4.  Harsh  Invective — Open  Derision. — "  In  propor- 
tion as  his  praise  is  eloquent  and  hearty  for  what  is  noble  and 
good  in  character,  his  scorn  is  severe  for  what  is  little  and 
mean.  .  .  .  He  carries  his  austerity  beyond  the  bounds 
of  humanity.  His  harshness  to  the  captive  of  his  criticism 
is  a  transgression  of  the  law  against  cruelty  to  animals. 
.  .  He  is  both  judge  and  executioner ;  condemns  the 
prisoner — puts  on  the  black  cap  with  a  stinging  sneer — 
hangs,  quarters,  and  scatters  his  limbs  to  the  four  winds 
— without  any  appearance  of  pity  or  remorse. 
He  breathes  upon  them  the  hot  breath  of  scorn  ;  he  crushes 
and  grinds  them  in  the  whirling  mill  of  his  logic.  Over 
the  burning  marl  of  his  critical  pandemonium  he  makes 
them  walk  with  unsandaled  feet,  and  views  their  ludicrous 
agonies  with  mocking  glee.  .  .  .  His  denunciation  is 
frequently  awful  in  its  depth,  earnestness,  and  crushing  force. 
All  cant  about  the  rights  of  man,  all  whining  and  whimpering 
about  the  clashing  interests  of  body  and  soul,  are  treated  with 
haughty  scorn  and  made  the  butt  of  contemptuous  ridicule." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Macaulay  has  a  rough  touch  ;  when  he  strikes  he  knocks 
down." — Taine. 

"  For  a  combination  of  sarcasm  and  crushing  invective  we 
hardly  know  where  the  sketch  of  Barere  can  find  a  parallel. ' ' 
— H.  H.  Lancaster. 
28 


434  MACAULAY 

"  We  hold  our  breath  while  Nemesis  descends  to  crucify 
the  miscreant  Barere.  .  .  .  That  he  was  a  good  hater, 
there  can  be  no  question.  .  .  .  Dr.  Johnson  would  have 
hugged  him  for  the  heartiness  with  which  he  lays  on  his  dark 
shades  of  color." — Morley  Punshon. 

"In  his  contemptuous  and  derisive  moods,  he  uses  a  studied 
meanness  of  expression  that  reminds  us  of  the  coarse  famil- 
iarity of  Swift. ' ' — Minto. 

"  Macaulay's  wit  is  always  sarcasm — sarcasm  embittered  by 
indignation,  and  yet  performing  its  minute  dissections  with 
judicial  gravity.  ...  He  first  flays,  then  kills,  then 
tramples,  and  then  hangs  his  victim  in  chains.  .  .  .  Nor 
will  his  sarcastic  vein,  once  awakened  against  Croker,  sleep 
till  it  has  scorched  poor  Bozzy  to  ashes  and  even  singed  the 
awful  wig  of  Johnson." — George  Gilfillan. 

"  His  fury  expressed  itself  in  a  studied  affectation  of  scorn 
and  in  that  rueful  laugh  which  is  described  in  unclassical 
English  as  proceeding  from  the  wrong  side  of  the  mouth. 
There  is  an  unfading  charm  in  the  swing  and  vigor  of  the 
lines  [of  the  '  Lays ']  which  brings  to  our  ears  the  very 
songs  of  the  battle,  the  clash  of  steel,  and  the  rushing  of  the 
horses,  the  noise  of  the  captains  and  the  shouting — '  a  cut- 
and-thrust  style,' Wilson  calls  it,  without  any  flourish.  .  .  . 
Though  not  malevolent,  or  even  naturally  an  uncharitable 
man,  Macaulay  was  too  ready  to  form  an  unkindly  judgment 
of  his  political  adversaries.  .  .  .  He  spoke  his  hatred 
out,  as  was  his  nature,  and  he  refused  to  see  any  redeeming 
points  in  the  character  of  his  adversary ;  we  may  say  indeed 
that  he  was  incapable  of  seeing  them." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  In  his  review  of  James  Mill's  '  Essay  on  Government,1 
he  treated  the  author  with  such  contemptuous  vehemence  of 
vituperation  that  he  felt  compelled  to  withdraw  the  article 
from  publication  and  even  to  volunteer  an  apology  for  his 
language.  .  .  .  Nor  is  Macaulay's  castigation,  superflu- 
ously insulting  and  needlessly  personal  as  that  castigation  was, 


MACAULAY  435 

of  Wallis,  the  editor  of  Macintosh's  'James  II.'  altogether 
creditable.  It  was  a  melancholy  acknowledgment  to  make 
that  he  had  '  attacked  Mr.  Wallis  with  an  asperity  which 
neither  literary  defects  nor  speculative  difference  can  justify, 
and  which  ought  to  be  reserved  for  offenders  against  the  laws 
of  morality  and  honor.'  '  —T.H.  S.  Escott. 

"  When  he  hates  a  man  he  calls  him  knave  or  fool  with 
unflinching  frankness." — Leslie  Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  suit,  happily  for  Bacon,  was  unsuccessful.  The  lady, 
indeed,  was  kind  to  him  in  more  ways  than  one.  She  rejected 
him  ;  and  she  accepted  his  enemy.  She  married  that  narrow- 
minded,  bad-hearted  pedant,  Sir  Edward  Coke,  and  did  her  best 
to  make  him  as  miserable  as  he  deserved  to  be." —  Essay  on 
Bacon. 

"  The  faults  of  James,  both  as  a  man  and  as  a  prince,  were 
numerous  ;  but  insensibility  to  the  claims  of  genius  and  learn- 
ing was  not  among  them.  He  was  indeed  made  up  of  two  men ; 
a  witty,  well-read  scholar,  who  wrote,  disputed,  and  harangued, 
and  a  nervous,  drivelling  idiot,  who  acted." — History  of  Eng- 
land. 

"  A  wise  man  might  talk  folly  like  this  by  his  own  fireside  ; 
but  that  any  human  being,  after  having  made  such  a  joke,  should 
write  it  down,  and  copy  it  out,  and  transmit  it  to  the  printer, 
and  correct  the  proof-sheets,  and  send  it  forth  into  the  world,  is 
enough  to  make  us  ashamed  of  our  species." — Essay  on  Southey's 
Colloquies  on  Society. 

"  Honor  and  shame  were  scarcely  more  to  him  than  light  and 
darkness  to  the  blind.  His  contempt  of  flattery  has  been  highly 
commended,  but  it  is  possible  to  be  below  flattery  as  well  as 
above  it.  One  who  trusts  nobody  will  not  trust  sycophants. 
One  who  does  not  value  real  glory  will  not  value  its  counterfeit." 
— History  of  England. 

5.  Sacrifice  of  Fact  to  Form  and  Effect—  "  The 

real  and  weighty  objection  to  his  inaccuracy  is  his  habit  of 
making  broad,  sweeping  statements.  .  .  .  He  is  con- 


436  MACAULAY 

stantly  misleading  by  innuendo  suggestive  of  the  false,  by 
epithets,  by  generalizations,  by  rhetorical  extensions  of  the 
actual  fact  or  text." — Saintsbury. 

"  Exact  balance  cannot  long  be  kept  up  without  a  sacrifice 
to  strict  truth.  .  .  .  Both  sides  are  extremely  exagger- 
ated to  make  the  antithesis  more  telling.  .  .  .  It  is  not 
denied  that  Macaulay  had  a  tendency  to  make  slight  sacrifices 
of  truth  to  antithesis.  .  .  .  He  has  been  accused  of  col- 
oring his  facts  to  suit  his  prejudice  in  favor  of  modern  cul- 
tivation and  to  gratify  his  favorite  passion  for  antithesis." 
— Minto. 

"  Herein  lies  his  essential  defect  as  an  historian.  In  his 
judgment  men  are  all  black  or  all  white.  He  applies  the  log- 
ical doctrine  of  the  excluded  middle  to  the  domain  of  ethics. 
The  characters  whom  he  draws  deserve  immortal  glory  or 
eternal  infamy.  ...  If  Macaulay's  account  of  the  sev- 
eral periods  which  he  describes  were  true,  no  honest  man 
could  have  been  a  Royalist  in  the  reign  of  Charles,  and  no 
patriot  could  have  been  a  Tory  in  the  time  of  William  III." 
—  T.  H.  S.  Escott. 

"  His  aptitude  for  forcing  things  into  a  firm  outline  and 
giving  them  a  sharply  defined  edge — these  and  other  singular 
talents  all  lend  themselves  to  his  intrepid  and  indefatigable 
pursuit  of  effect.  .  .  .  Macaulay's  hardy  and  habitual 
recourse  to  strenuous  superlatives  is  fundamentally  unscien- 
tific and  untrue." — -John  Morley. 

"That  his  love  for  pointed  diction  leads  him  into  many 
errors,  cannot  be  denied." — E.  P.  IVJiipple. 

"In  seeking  for  paradoxes,  Macaulay  often  stumbles  on, 
but  more  frequently  stumbles  over,  truth." — George  Gil- 
fillan. 

"  The  desire  for  effect  at  any  cost  makes  some  of  his  char- 
acters, such  as  Bacon,  mere  heaps  of  contradictory  qualities." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  We  will  not  deny  that  in  the  heat  of  his  animosity  he 


MACAULAY  437 

may  have  distorted  facts  ;  for  every  student  of  history  knows 
with  what  readiness  those  elastic  trifles  will  assume  all  va- 
rieties of  shape  according  to  the  glasses  through  which  they 
are  observed.  But  these  at  the  worst  are  in  a  few  extreme 
instances,  for  which  we  at  least  are  ready  to  forgive  the  only 
historian  who  has  been  able  to  make  his  readers  live  in  the 
period  of  which  he  writes.  Colored  his  narrative  may  be, 
yet  it  is  history,  and  history  of  the  most  profitable  kind." 
— Mrs.  Oliphant. 

' '  The  love  of  form  may  be  cultivated  to  an  unhealthy  ex- 
tent, engendering  a  comparative  indifference  to  the  matter 
which  it  clothes.  ...  If  history  is  made  amusing,  who 
will  take  the  trouble  to  investigate  its  truth  ?  and  who  will 
care  if  it  be  true?  .  .  .  The  deliberate  rejection  of  all 
minor  points  which  would  mar  the  clearness  of  a  statement,  a 
refusal  to  come  within  the  circle  of  some  sweeping  general- 
ization, must  have  created  wrong  impressions.  .  .  .  He 
had  so  much  confidence  in  the  truth  of  his  general  views  that 
he  doubtless  considered  himself  justified  in  risking  something 
to  promote  their  popularity.  Of  these  four  volumes  of  bold 
and  brilliant  declaration  we  may  say  that  they  are  beautiful, 
they  are  magnificent,  but  they  are  not  history." — T.  E. 
KetbcL 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  For  the  public  mind  was  possessed  of  the  belief  that  the  more 
conscientious  a  Papist  was,  the  more  likely  he  must  be  to  plot 
against  a  Protestant  government." — Essay  on  Bacon. 

"The  difference  between  the  soaring  angel  and  the  creeping 
snake  was  but  a  type  of  the  difference  between  Bacon  the  Philos- 
opher and  Bacon  the  Attorney-General,  Bacon  seeking  for  truth 
and  Bacon  seeking  for  the  seals." — Essay  on  Bacon. 

"  His  occasional  remarks  on  the  affairs  of  ancient  Rome  and 
of  modern  Europe  are  full  of  errors  ;  but  he  writes  of  times  with 
respect  to  which  almost  every  other  writer  has  been  in  the  wrong  ; 
and  therefore,  by  resolutely  deviating  from  his  predecessors,  he 


438  MACAULAY 

is  often  in  the  right.  .  .  .  His  style  would  never  have 
been  elegant,  but  it  might  at  least  have  been  manly  and  per- 
spicuous ;  and  nothing  but  the  most  elaborate  case  could  possibly 
have  made  it  so  bad  as  it  is." — Essay  on  Mitford's  History  of 
Greece. 

"  The  King  cringed  to  his  rival  that  he  might  trample  on  his 
people,  sank  into  a  viceroy  of  France,  and  pocketed  with  com- 
placent infamy  her  degrading  insults  and  her  more  degrading 
gold.  The  caresses  of  harlots  and  the  jests  of  buffoons  regulated 
the  policy  of  the  state.  The  government  had  just  ability  enough 
to  deceive  and  just  religion  enough  to  persecute.  The  principles 
of  liberty  were  the  scoff  of  every  grinning  courtier  and  the 
Anathema  Maranatha  of  every  fawning  dean.  In  every  high 
place  worship  was  paid  to  Charles  and  James,  Belial  and  Moloch  ; 
and  England  propitiated  those  obscene  and  cruel  idols  with  the 
blood  of  her  best  and  bravest  children.  Crime  succeeded  to 
crime,  and  disgrace  to  disgrace,  till  the  race  accursed  of  God  and 
man  was  a  second  time  driven  forth,  to  wander  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  and  to  be  a  byword  and  a  shaking  of  the  head  to  the 
nations." — Essay  on  Milton. 


6.  Narrative  Power — Panoramic  View. — "The  first 
and  most  obvious  secret  of  Macaulay's  place  on  popular  book 
shelves  is  that  he  has  a  true  genius  for  narration,  and  narration 
will  always,  in  the  eyes  of  many  all  over  the  world,  stand  first 
among  literary  gifts.  .  .  .  His  firmness  and  directness  of 
statement,  his  spiritedness,  his  art  of  selecting  salient  and 
highly  colored  detail,  and  all  his  other  merits  as  a  narrator 
keep  the  listener's  attention,  and  make  him  the  easiest  of  writ- 
ers to  follow." — -John  Morley. 

11  Narrative  was  his  peculiar  forte." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  The  clearest  and  most  fascinating  of  narrators. " — E.  A. 
Freeman. 

"  That  a  man  like  Macaulay  is  always  fascinating,  that  his 
account  of  the  Seven  Years'  War  and  the  Silesian  campaigns 
attests  a  descriptive  power  of  the  very  highest  kind,  I  need  not 
tell  those  who  have  read  his  essay.  .  .  .  Nothing  could 


MACAULAY  439 

be  more  brilliant  than  his  manner  of  depicting  the  conquest  of 
India  by  Lord  Clive." — Grimm. 

"There  is  no  lack  of  pictorial  matter  in  Macaulay.  He 
had  no  bent  for  the  description  of  still  life.  It  was  vigorous 
and  stirring  movement — '  the  rush  and  the  roar  of  practical 
life  ' — that  was  of  interest  to  him.  .  .  .  The  character 
of  our  author's  style  consists  more  in  pictorial  touches  brought 
in  by  a  side  wind  than  in  the  direct  description  of  objects." 
— Minto. 

"  The  ease  and  charm  of  the  narrative  in  such  favorite  es- 
says as  those  on  Clive  and  Warren  Hastings  cannot  but  be  felt 
even  by  those  who  are  most  inclined  to  differ  from  his  esti- 
mate of  his  subjects.  .  .  .  His  history  is  one  of  the 
greatest  efforts  in  narrative  that  have  ever  been  made.  From 
beginning  to  end  we  have  a  vast  history — in  the  original  sense 
of  the  word,  which  is  usually  denoted  by  lopping  the  first  syl- 
lable— flowing  on  in  a  perfectly  unbroken  stream  in  a  thousand 
little  rivulets  that  converge  into  the  main  flood,  neither  neg- 
lected nor  magnified  into  undue  importance,  but  firmly  and 
skilfully  guided  into  their  proper  places  as  the  component 
parts  of  a  great  whole.  Nothing  is  more  striking  in  Macaulay's 
style  than  this  absolute  continuity  of  story.  .  .  .  When 
we  read  Macaulay  ...  we  feel  like  a  spectator  of  a  great 
natural  drama  unrolling  itself  before  our  eyes.  We  are  not 
even  hearing  the  story  told  by  one  of  the  actors  but  actually 
looking  on  at  what  is  taking  place.  This  is,  to  our  mind,  the 
great  superiority  of  Macaulay's  writings  over  those  of  more  ex- 
act historians.  ...  In  Macaulay's  pictures  of  the  past, 
the  reader  can  see  at  a  glance  more  of  the  real  life  of  the  world 
as  it  then  was  than  the  most  toilsome  examination  of  historical 
evidence  can  afford  him." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 


7.  Eloquence— Oratorical    Climax. — "  Certain  pas- 
sages of  Macaulay's  prose  rise  higher  than  the  finest  raptures 


440  MACAULAY 

of  his  poetry,  and  the  term  Eloquence  will  measure  the  loftiest 
reaches  of  either." — George  Gilfillan. 

"  Occasionally  he  uses  the  long  oratorical,  climactic  period, 
consisting  of  a  number  of  clauses  in  the  same  construction  in- 
creasing gradually  in  strength  so  as  to  form  a  climax. 
The  compact  finish  [is]  produced  by  the  frequent  occurrence 
of  the  periodic  arrangement.  .  .  .  Very  often  his  elo- 
quence is  lofty  and  inspiring.  ...  In  every  paragraph 
we  are  conscious  of  being  led  on  to  a. crowning  demonstration. 
His  arts  of  contrast  have  the  effect  of  making  a  climax.  He 
seems  to  pause  in  the  course  of  his  narrative  or  his  argument 
and  go  back  for  a  race  that  will  carry  him  sweepingly  over 
the  next  obstacle.  He  is  careful  to  reserve  the  most  telling 
for  the  end,  and  artfully  prepares  the  way  for  a  final  resolu- 
tion."— Minto. 

"  Rarely  has  eloquence  been  more  captivating  than  Macau- 
lay's.  .  .  .  He  has  the  oratorical  afflatus.  ...  Of 
whatever  subject  he  treats,  he  is  impassioned  for  his  sub- 
ject."— Taine. 

"  He  was  one  of  the  most  eloquent  speakers  in  Parliament." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  He  displays  much  of  the  imperious  scorn,  passionate 
strength,  and  swelling  diction  of  Brougham." — Walter  Bage- 
hot. 

"  Of  climax,  the  coping-stone  of  the  emphatic  style,  he  is 
a  master,  and  this  it  is  which  gives  to  his  rapid  antitheses  a 
strength  and  cogency  of  their  own.  After  he  has  accumulated 
his  evidence  and  brought  out  point  after  point  in  his  own 
favor  ...  he  never  fails  at  the  right  moment  to  give 
the  final  blow  which  drives  his  conclusion  home  and  leaves  it 
embedded  in  our  own  minds  to  the  exclusion  of  all  subordi- 
nate ideas  which  might  weaken  our  perception  of  its  force." 
— T.  E.  Kebbel. 


MACAULAY  441 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Such  a  mark  of  national  respect  was  due  to  the  unsullied 
statesman,  to  the  accomplished  scholar,  to  the  master  of  pure 
English  eloquence,  to  the  consummate  painter  of  life  and  manners. 
It  was  due,  above  all,  to  the  great  satirist,  who  alone  knew  how  to 
use  ridicule  without  abusing  it;  who,  without  inflicting  a  wound, 
effected  a  great  social  reform  ;  and  who  reconciled  wit  and  virtue 
after  a  long  and  disastrous  separation,  during  which  wit  had  been 
led  astray  by  profligacy  and  virtue  by  fanaticism." — Essay  on 
Addis  on. 

"  Then  came  those  days,  never  to  be  recalled  without  a  blush, 
the  days  of  servitude  without  loyalty  and  sensuality  without  love, 
of  dwarfish  talents  and  gigantic  vices.  The  paradise  of  cold 
hearts  and  narrow  minds,  the  golden  age  of  the  coward,  the  bigot, 
and  the  knave." — Essay  on  Milton. 

"  The  time  was  approaching  when  our  island,  while  struggling 
to  keep  down  the  United  States  of  America,  and  pressed  with  a 
still  nearer  danger  by  the  too  just  discontents  of  Ireland,  was  to 
be  assailed  by  France,  Spain,  and  Holland  and  to  be  threatened 
by  the  armed  neutrality  of  the  Baltic  ;  when  even  our  maritime 
supremacy  was  to  be  in  jeopardy ;  when  hostile  fleets  were  to 
command  the  straits  of  Calpe  and  the  Mexican  sea ;  when  the 
British  flag  was  to  be  scarcely  able  to  protect  the  British  Chan- 
nel."— Essay  on  Hastings. 

8.  Clearness. — "  Nobody  can  have  any  excuse  for  not 
knowing  exactly  what  it  is  that  Macaulay  means.  This  is  a 
prodigious  merit  when  we  reflect  with  what  fatal  alacrity  hu- 
man language  lends  itself,  in  the  hands  of  so  many  performers 
upon  the  pliant  instrument,  to  all  sorts  of  obscurity,  ambiguity, 
disguise,  and  pretentious  mystification.  .  .  .  Macaulay 
never  wrote  an  obscure  sentence  in  his  life." — -John  Morley. 

"  Clearness  is  the  first  of  the  cardinal  virtues  of  his  style ; 
and  nobody  ever  wrote  more  clearly  than  Macaulay." — Les- 
lie Stephen. 

"  One  can  trace  in  his  writing  a  constant  effort  to  make 
himself  intelligible  to  the  meanest  capacity.  Macaulay's 


442  MACAULAY 

composition  is  as  far  from  being  abstruse  as  printed  matter 
well  can  be.  .  .  .  For  his  perspicuity  he  certainly  de- 
serves all  praise." — Minto. 

"  At  the  close  of  the  last  of  a  series  of  meetings  in  which  a 
gentleman  read  the  '  History  '  aloud  to  his  poorer  neighbors 
one  of  the  audience  rose,  and  moved  in  North-Country  fash- 
ion a  vote  of  thanks  to  Mr.  Macaulay  '  for  having  written  a 
history  which  working  men  can  understand.'  " — G.  O.  Tre- 
velyan. 

"  Many  a  reader  of  Macaulay  is  deceived  by  his  perfect 
clearness,  and  will  not  admit  that  what  appears  so  plain,  vis- 
ible, and  obvious  is  in  the  least  recondite  or  remote.  A  little 
haze  would  quadruple  the  distance,  and  a  good  Teutonic  fog 
would  have  made  him  pass  for  one  of  the  most  profound 
thinkers  of  the  age.  .  .  .  This  lofty  perspicuity,  this 
power  of  sustaining  himself  at  a  height  above  a  wide  and 
complex  subject,  is  as  visible  in  the  Essays  as  in  the  History." 
— -J.  C.  Morrison. 

"  Macaulay's  writings  have  one  very  peculiar  and  very 
popular  quality.  They  are  eminently  clear.  They  can  by 
no  possibility,  at  any  time,  be  nebulous.  You  can  read  them 
as  you  run." — George  Gilfillan. 

"  He  thought  little  of  recasting  a  whole  paragraph  in  order 
to  obtain  a  more  lucid  arrangement." — A.  P.  Russell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Where  there  was  a  good  path  he  seldom  failed  to  choose  it. 
But  now  he  had  only  a  choice  among  paths  every  one  of  which 
seemed  likely  to  lead  to  destruction.  From  one  faction  he  could 
hope  for  no  cordial  support.  The  cordial  support  of  the  other 
faction  he  could  retain  only  by  becoming  the  most  factious  man  in 
his  kingdom,  a  Shaftesbury  on  the  throne.  If  he  persecuted  the 
Tories  their  sulkiness  would  infallibly  be  turned  into  fury.  If  he 
showed  favor  to  the  Tories,  it  was  by  no  means  certain  that  he 
would  retain  their  good-will  ;  and  it  was  but  too  probable  that 


MACAULAY  443 

he  might  lose  his  hold  on  the  hearts  of  the  Whigs.  Something, 
however,  he  must  do  :  something  he  must  risk  :  a  Privy  Coun- 
cil must  be  sworn  in  :  all  the  great  offices,  political  and  judicial, 
must  be  filled.  It  was  impossible  to  make  an  arrangement  that 
would  please  everybody  and  difficult  to  make  an  arrangement 
that  would  please  anybody  :  but  an  arrangement  must  be  made." 
— History  of  England, 

"  To  sum  up  the  whole  :  we  should  say  that  the  aim  of  the 
Platonic  philosophy  was  to  exalt  man  into  a  god.  The  aim  of 
the  Baconian  philosophy  was  to  provide  man  with  what  he  re- 
quires while  he  continues  to  be  a  man.  The  aim  of  the  Platonic 
philosophy  was  to  raise  us  far  above  vulgar  wants.  The  aim  of 
the  Baconian  philosophy  was  to  supply  our  vulgar  wants.  The 
former  aim  was  noble;  but  the  latter  was  attainable.  Plato 
drew  a  good  bow,  ...  he  aimed  at  the  stars  ;  his  arrows 
struck  nothing.  .  .  .  Bacon  fixed  his  eye  on  a  mark  which 
was  placed  on  earth.  .  .  .  and  hit  it  in  the  white." — Essay 
on  Bacon. 

"  The  heroic  couplet  was  then  the  favorite  measure.  The  art 
of  arranging  words  in  that  measure,  so  that  the  lines  may  flow 
smoothly,  that  the  accents  may  fall  correctly,  that  the  rhymes 
may  strike  the  ear  strongly,  and  that  there  may  be  a  pause  at  the 
end  of  every  distich,  is  an  art  as  mechanical  as  that  of  mending 
a  kettle  or  shoeing  a  horse,  and  may  be  learned  by  any  human 
being  who  has  sense  enough  to  learn  anything.  But,  like  other 
mechanical  arts,  it  was  gradually  improved  by  means  of  many 
experiments  and  many  failures.  It  was  reserved  for  Pope  to 
discover  the  trick." — Essay  on  Addison. 

9.  Ornamentation — Splendor  of  Imagery. — "What- 
ever his  subject,  he  contrives  to  pour  into  it  with  singular  dex- 
terity a  stream  of  rich,  graphic,  and  telling  illustrations  from 
widely  diversified  sources.  .  .  .  He  has  a  rapid  eye  for 
contrasts  and  analogies." — John  Morley. 

"  Macaulay  was  all  fire  and  brilliancy.  Every  sentence 
was  a  rhetorical  flourish,  and  he  naturally  seemed  to  speak  in 
a  dialect  that  can  only  be  described  as  poetic." — T,  H.  S. 
Escott. 


444  MACAULAY 

"  From  another  pen  such  masses  of  ornament  would  be 
tawdry  :  with  him  they  are  only  rich.  .  .  .  He  embel- 
lishes the  barrenest  subject. " — IV.  E.  Gladstone. 

"  Our  path  glitters  with  '  barbaric  pearl  and  gold.' 
If  we  are  wearied,  it  is  from  excess  of  splendor.  .  .  .  We 
are  in  a  gorgeous  saloon,  from  whose  walls  flash  out  upon  us  a 
long  array  of  pictures.  He  ransacks  for  precedents  and  illus- 
trations the  histories  of  almost  every  age  and  clime." — Mor- 
ley  Pitnshon. 

"His  similitudes  are  often  brilliantly  ingenious  and  ex- 
pressed with  his  usual  richness  and  felicity  of  language,  but 
they  are  too  artificial  and  gaudy  finery  to  be  worthy  of  serious 
imitation.  .  .  .  Instance  is  piled  upon  instance  and  com- 
parison upon  comparison,  where  a  full  statement  would  be 
enough  to  make  the  meaning  clear  to  the  smallest  capacity. 
The  fluent  abundance  of  examples  and  comparisons  is  often 
greater  than  the  subject  demands.  .  .  .  His  prodigious 
knowledge  of  particulars  betrays  him  into  a  superfluity  of  illus- 
tration. .  .  .  He  has  an  incomparable  command  of  ex- 
amples and  illustrations." — Minto. 

"  His  powers  of  brilliant  illustration  have  never  been 
denied,  and  it  would  not  be  easy  to  name  their  equal." — -J. 
C.  Morrison. 

"  He  has  unbounded  command  of  illustration.  .  .  . 
Macaulay's  most  memorable  things  are  chiefly  happy  illustra- 
tions, verbal  antitheses,  and  clever  alliterations.  .  .  . 
Frequent,  cool,  and  refreshing  literary  illustrations,  blowing 
like  breezes  across  the  otherwise  arid  and  blood-dried  pages." 
— George  Gilfillan. 

"  The  grave  and  rich  ornamentation  which  Macaulay 
throws  over  his  narrative,  a  sort  of  potent  vegetation,  flowers 
of  brilliant  purple  like  those  which  spread  over  every  page  of 
'  Paradise  Lost '  and  <  Childe  Harold.'  "—Tatne. 

"  His  early  writings  are  overlaid  with  gaudy  ornament." 
— H.  H.  Lancaster. 


MACAULAY  445 

"  He  gives  us  the  most  vivid  and  effective  figures.  .  .  . 
It  [his  style]  is  bright,  glittering,  brilliant.  .  .  .  It  is 
dyed  in  a  thousand  colors  ;  it  glitters  with  a  thousand  points." 
— /.  H.  Stirling. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  person  who  on  this  occasion  came  forward  as  the 
champion  of  the  Colonists,  the  forerunner  of  Swift  and  of  Grattan, 
was  William  Molyneux.  He  would  have  rejected  the  name  of 
Irishman  as  indignantly  as  a  citizen  of  Marseilles  or  Cyrene, 
proud  of  his  pure  Greek  blood  and  fully  qualified  to  send  a 
chariot  to  the  Olympic  race-course,  would  have  rejected  the 
name  of  Gaul  or  Libyian." — History  of  England. 

"  The  people  of  India,  when  we  subdued  them,  were  ten  times 
as  numerous  as  the  Americans  whom  the  Spaniards  vanquished, 
and  were,  at  the  same  time,  quite  as  highly  civilized  as  the  vic- 
torious Spaniards.  They  had  reared  cities  larger  and  fairer  than 
Saragossa  or  Toledo  and  buildings  more  beautiful  and  costly 
than  the  cathedral  of  Seville.  They  could  show  bankers  richer 
than  the  richest  firms  of  Barcelona  or  Cadiz,  vice-roys  whose 
splendor  far  surpassed  that  of  Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  myriads 
of  cavalry  and  long  trains  of  artillery  which  would  have  aston- 
ished the  Great  Captain." — Essay  on  Lord  Clive. 

"  This  is  as  absurd  as  it  would  be  in  a  Haytian  negro  of  our 
time  to  dwell  with  national  pride  on  the  greatness  of  Louis  the 
Fourteenth  and  to  speak  of  Blenheim  and  Ramillies  with  patriotic 
regret  and  shame.  .  .  .  One  of  the  ablest  among  them,  in- 
deed, attempted  to  win  the  hearts  of  his  English  subjects  by 
espousing  an  English  princess.  But  by  many  of  his  barons  this 
marriage  was  regarded  as  a  marriage  between  a  white  planter  and 
a  quadroon  girl  would  now  be  regarded  in  Virginia." — History  of 
England . 

"  Scotsmen,  whose  dwellings  and  whose  food  were  as  wretched 
as  those  of  the  Icelanders  of  our  time,  wrote  Latin  verse  with 
more  than  the  delicacy  of  Vida,  and  made  discoveries  in  science 
which  would  have  added  to  the  renown  of  Galileo." — History  of 
England. 


446  MACAULAY 

10.  Power  of  Personal  Portraiture— Delineation 
of  Character. — "  He  had  a  keen  eye  for  the  slightest  hint 
that  could  be  turned  to  account  in  sketching  the  portrait  of  a 
man.  .  .  .  All  his  portraits  are  drawn  from  life  and  stand 
out  upon  his  canvas  like  Holbein's  portrait  of  Wentworth — 
you  know  the  man  in  an  instant." — C.  Pebody. 

"  We  thank  him  for  the  vividness  of  delineation  by  which 
we  can  see  statesmen  like  Somers  and  Nottingham,  etc."— 
Morley  Punshon. 

11  [He  paints]  elaborate  portraitures  of  the  greatest  English 
statesmen." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

"  [He  had]  a  delight  in  gathering  and  a  power  of  painting 
personal  peculiarities.  [He  was]  a  great  master  of  portrait 
painting."—/.  H.  Stirling. 

"To  us  there  is  an  even  greater  attraction  in  the  light  yet 
elaborate  studies  of  character  such  as  are  contained  in  the 
papers  on  Sir  William  Temple  and  Addison.  .  .  .  There 
is  no  point  in  which  his  genius  is  more  amply  displayed  than 
in  the  masterly,  if  occasionally  prejudiced,  sketches  of  character 
with  which  the  '  History'  is  interspersed.  .  .  .  Thus  we 
get  those  exquisite  little  portraits  in  miniature  which  Macaulay 
threw  in  with  such  wondrous  skill  when  he  had  to  present  new 
characters  upon  the  scene." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  [William  of  Orange]  was  now  in  his  thirty-seventh  year. 
But  both  in  body  and  mind  he  was  older  than  other  men  of  the 
same  age.  .  .  .  His  external  appearance  is  almost  as  well 
known  to  us  as  to  his  own  captains  and  counsellors.  .  .  .  His 
features  were  such  as  no  artist  could  fail  to  seize.  His  name  at 
once  calls  up  before  us  a  slender  and  feeble  frame,  a  lofty  and 
ample  forehead,  a  nose  curved  like  the  beak  of  an  eagle,  an  eye 
rivalling  that  of  an  eagle  in  brightness  and  keenness,  a  thoughtful 
and  somewhat  sullen  brow,  a  firm  and  somewhat  peevish  mouth, 
a  cheek  pale,  thin,  and  deeply  furrowed  by  sickness  and  by  care. 
That  pensive,  severe,  and  solemn  aspect  could  scarcely  have  be- 


MACAULAY  447 

longed  to  a  happy  or  a  good-natured  man.  But  it  indicates  in  a 
manner  not  to  be  mistaken  capacity  equal  to  the  most  arduous 
enterprises  and  fortitude  not  to  be  shaken  by  reverses  or  dan- 
gers."— History  of  England. 

"  In  the  foreground  is  that  strange  figure  which  is  as  familiar 
to  us  as  the  figures  of  those  among  whom  we  have  been  brought 
up — the  gigantic  body,  the  huge  massy  face,  seamed  with  the 
scars  of  disease  ;  the  brown  coat,  the  black  worsted  stockings, 
the  gray  wig  with  a  scorched  foretop  ;  the  dirty  hands,  the  nails 
bitten  and  pared  to  the  quick.  We  see  the  eyes  and  mouth  mov- 
ing with  convulsive  twitches  ;  we  see  the  heavy  form  rolling ;  we 
hear  it  puffing  ;  and  then  comes  the  '  Why,  sir  ! '  and  the  '  What 
then,  sir  ?  '  and  the  '  No,  sir  ! '  and  the  '  You  don't  see  your  way 
through  the  question,  sir  ! '  " — Essay  on  BosweWs  Life  of  Johnson. 

"  Steele  had  left  college,  been  disinherited,  led  a  vagrant  life, 
served  in  the  army,  and  had  written  comedies.  He  was  one  of 
those  people  whom  it  is  impossible  either  to  hate  or  to  respect. 
His  temper  was  sweet,  his  affections  warm,  his  spirits  lively,  his 
passions  strong,  and  his  principles  weak.  His  life  was  spent  in 
sinning  and  repenting.  He  was,  however,  so  good-natured  that 
it  was  impossible  to  be  seriously  angry  with  him." — Essay  on 
Addison. 

II.  Commonplace. — "  More  than  once  his  explications 
are  commonplace.  He  proves  what  all  allow." — Taine. 

"  He  abounds  in  the  stock  metaphor,  the  stock  transition, 
the  stock  equipoise,  the  stock  rhetoric,  the  stock  expedients 
generally  of  Addison,  Robertson,  Goldsmith,  etc." — -J.  H. 
Stirling. 

"  His  work  abounds  in  what  is  substantially  commonplace. 
We  may  be  sure  that  no  author  could  have  achieved  Macau - 
lay's  boundless  popularity  among  his  contemporaries  unless 
his  works  had  abounded  in  what  is  substantially  common- 
place. .  .  .  It  is  one  of  the  first  things  to  be  said  about 
Macaulay  that  he  was  in  exact  accord  with  the  common 
average  sentiment  of  his  day  on  every  subject  on  which  he 
spoke.  His  superiority  was  not  of  that  highest  kind  which 
leads  a  man  to  march  in  thought  on  the  outside  margin  of 


448  MACAULAY 

the  crowd,  watching  them,  sympathizing  with  them,  hoping 
for  them,  but  apart.  Macaulay  was  one  of  the  middle-class 
crowd  in  his  heart,  and  only  rose  above  it  by  extraordinary 
gifts  of  expression." — -John  Morley. 

"  He  states  the  grounds  of  his  judgments  in  a  manner  so 
intelligible  to  all  of  us ;  he  appears  to  examine  every  ac- 
tion by  a  strict  moral  rule  and  yet  by  one  which  is  not  too 
high  for  us,  which  we  can  all  recognize ;  which,  in  fact,  is 
deduced  for  the  most  part  from  habits  and  practices  where- 
with respectable  people  in  our  century  are  in  general  con- 
formity."— F.  D.  Maurice. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  is  better  that  mankind  should  be  governed  by  wise  laws 
well  administered,  and  by  an  enlightened  public  opinion,  than 
by  priestcraft  :  but  it  is  better  that  men  should  be  governed  by 
priestcraft  than  by  brute  violence,  by  such  a  prelate  as  Dunstan 
than  by  such  a  warrior  as  Penda.  A  society  sunk  in  ignorance 
and  ruled  by  mere  physical  force  has  great  reason  to  rejoice 
when  a  class,  the  influence  of  which  is  intellectual  and  moral, 
rises  to  ascendancy.  Such  a  class  will  doubtless  abuse  its  power, 
but  mental  power  even  when  abused  is  still  a  nobler  and  better 
power  than  that  which  consists  merely  in  corporeal  strength." 
— History  of  England. 

"  Of  course,  we  do  not  mean  to  defend  all  their  measures. 
Far  from  it.  There  never  was  a  perfect  man  ;  it  would,  there- 
fore, be  the  height  of  absurdity  to  expect  a  perfect  party  or  a 
perfect  assembly.  For  large  bodies  are  far  more  likely  to  err 
than  individuals.  The  passions  are  inflamed  by  sympathy  ; 
the  fear  of  punishment  and  the  sense  of  shame  are  diminished 
by  partition.  Every  day  we  see  men  do  for  their  faction  what 
they  would  die  rather  than  do  for  themselves." — Essay  on  Hal- 
lam1  s  Constitutional  History. 

"  These  things  produced  great  excitement  among  the  pop- 
ulace, which  is  always  more  moved  by  what  impresses  the 
senses  than  by  what  is  addressed  to  the  reason." — History  of 
England. 


MACAULAY  449 

12.  Patriotism. — "  The  commonplaces  of  patriotism  and 
freedom  would  never  have  been  so  powerful  in  Macaulay's 
hands  if  they  had  not  been  inspired  by  a  sincere  and  hearty 
faith  in  them  in  the  soul  of  the  writer." — John  Morley. 

"  His  love  of  liberty  is  expressed  in  passages  as  full  of  fire 
as  the  poets." — J.  Skelton. 

"  His  country  was  England.  In  this  little  spot  he  concen- 
trated a  force  of  admiration  and  of  worship  which  might 
have  covered  all  the  world.  .  .  .  They  [his  works]  are 
pervaded  by  a  generous  love  of  liberty." — W.  E.  Gladstone. 

' '  With  Macaulay  the  love  of  country  was  a  passion.  How 
he  kindles  at  each  stirring  or  plaintive  memory  in  the  annals 
he  was  so  glad  to  record  !" — Morley  Punshon. 

"  The  noble  love  of  liberty  animates  his  entire  work." 
— Trevelyan. 

"  He  had  a  stout  and  noble  patriotism." — Saintsbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  shall  relate  how,  from  the  auspicious  union  of  order  and 
freedom,  sprang  a  prosperity  of  which  the  annals  of  human  af- 
fairs had  furnished  no  example  ;  how  our  country  from  a  state 
of  ignominious  vassalage  rapidly  rose  to  the  place  of  umpire 
among  European  powers  ;  how  her  opulence  and  her  martial 
glory  grew  together  ;  how  a  gigantic  commerce  gave  birth  to  a 
maritime  power  compared  with  which  every  other  maritime 
power,  ancient  or  modern,  sinks  into  insignificance,  etc." — His- 
tory of  England. 

"  I  hope  that  it  will  be  in  my  power  to  inspire  at  least  some 
of  my  countrymen  with  love  and  reverence  for  those  free  and 
noble  institutions  to  which  Britain  owes  her  greatness  and  from 
which,  I  trust,  she  is  not  destined  soon  to  descend." — Speech  on 
Retiring  from  Political  Life. 

"The  history  of  England  is  emphatically  one  of  progress. 
.  .  .  In  the  course  of  seven  centuries  this  wretched  and  de- 
graded race  have  become  the  greatest  and  most  highly  civilized 
people  that  ever  the  world  saw,  have  spread  their  dominion  over 
29 


450  MACAULAY 

every  quarter  of  the  globe,  have  scattered  the  seeds  of  mighty  em- 
pires and  republics  over  vast  continents  of  which  no  dim  intima- 
tion had  ever  reached  Ptolemy  or  Strabo — have  created  a  mar- 
itime power  which  would  annihilate  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the 
natives  of  Tyre,  Athens,  Carthage,  Venice,  and  Genoa  together, 
etc." — Essay  on  Mackintosh's  History. 

13.  Prejudice— Partiality— Bias. — "  He  reserved  his 
pugnacity  for  quarrels  undertaken  on  public  grounds  and 
fought  out  with  the  world  looking  on  as  umpire. 
Independent,  frank,  and  proud,  almost  to  a  fault,  he  detested 
the  whole  race  of  robbers  and  time-servers,  parasites  and 
scandal-mongers,  led-captains,  led-authors — and  some  of  his 
antipathies  have  stamped  themselves  indelibly  on  literary  his- 
tory."— G.  O.  Trevelyan. 

"  He  is  a  terribly  partial  historian." — Saintsbury. 

"An  incomparable  advocate,  he  pleads  an  infinite  number 
of  causes. ' ' — Taine. 

"He  is  a  brilliant  advocate  for  or  against  a  person." — 
Grimm. 

"He  sometimes  allows  his  Whig  propensities  to  get  the 
better  of  strict  justice. ' ' — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  Partiality  for  some  characters  amounting  to  favoritism ; 
a  hatred  for  others  amounting  to  fury." — George  Gilfillan. 

"His  prejudices  were  sometimes  strong  and  extreme — but 
they  were  honest." — Alexander  H.  Stephens. 

"  Lord  Macaulay  was  a  great  man,  but  he  was  a  great 
Whig  man."—/.  H.  Shirley. 

"  Not  only  were  his  critical  faculties  of  nearly  the  same 
calibre  as  Johnson's,  they  were  invested  with  at  least  an  equal 
amount  of  prejudice.  .  .  .  His  history,  in  fact,  flowed 
from  his  politics  and  not  his  politics  from  his  history.  .  .  . 
The  party  under  whom  he  was  to  serve  was  ready  to  his 
hand,  .  .  .  and  having  once  given  his  allegiance,  he 
continued  their  faithful  and  successful  soldier  to  his  life's  end. 
What  sort  of  history  would  be  written  by  such  a  man  as  this, 


MACAULAY  45 1 

it  is  superfluous  to  inquire.  .  .  .  When  he  got  to  a 
Whig  stratum  of  fact  he  wisely  stopped  digging,  preconceived 
of  the  worthlessness  of  everything  that  lay  beneath.  His 
mind  was  already  made  up,  and  he  only  read  for  arguments 
to  help  out  a  foregone  conclusion.  .  .  .  He  did  not 
consider  that  it  was  his  business  to  discover  truth.  That,  in 
his  eyes,  had  been  discovered  already.  He  had  to  narrate 
the  facts  in  which  that  truth  lay  embedded ;  and  those  he 
was  at  liberty  to  narrate  in  any  way  that  he  thought  likely  to 
prove  most  attractive  or  that  was  most  agreeable  to  his  own 
genius.  ...  At  the  age  of  three  or  four  and  twenty  he 
became  mixed  up  with  a  great  party  struggle  ;  he  remained  in 
their  [Whig]  ranks  till  the  battle  was  won ;  and,  like  the  battle  of 
the  Nile,  it  was  not  a  victory,  but  a  conquest.  .  .  .  His 
first  experience  of  public  life  was  brief  and  brilliant,  and  had 
stamped  a  character  upon  his  mind  which  was  never  after- 
ward changed.  His  political  creed  remained  stationary  from 
that  moment,  growing  in  intensity  but  closed  to  impressions 
from  without.  .  .  .  Not  only  does  he  seem  to  have 
been  indifferent  to  truth  as  an  abstract  object,  he  seems  not 
to  have  been  acquainted  with  the  deeper  principles  at  stake  in 
the  religious  and  philosophic  controversies  which  he  under- 
took to  discuss.  .  .  .  This  defect  is,  of  course,  most 
conspicuous  in  his  essay  on  Bacon.  .  .  .  Macaulay,  of 
course,  had  a  perfect  right  to  consider  metaphysics  unworthy 
the  attention  of  a  man  of  sense.  .  .  .  But  he  had  no 
right  to  assume  it.  ...  His  criticism  [though  sensible 
and  clear]  ...  is  not  what,  in  these  days,  we  should 
call  philosophical  criticism.  .  .  .  Though  he  was  doubt- 
less a  vivacious  reader,  it  is  not  equally  clear  that  he  was  a 
conscientious  student.  He  found  himself  possessed  of  a  fac- 
ulty which  raised  him  above  the  necessity  of  research.  With 
that  he  could  command  the  homage  of  the  people  at  will." 
—  T.  E.  Kebbel. 


452  MACAULAY 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"There  is,  we  have  said,  no  consistency  in  Mr.  Souther's 
political  system.  But  if  there  be  in  his  political  system  any 
leading  principle,  any  one  error  which  diverges  more  widely  and 
variously  than  any  other,  it  is  that  of  which  his  theory  about 
national  works  is  a  ramification.  He  conceives  that  the  business 
of  the  magistrate  is,  not  merely  to  see  that  the  persons  and  prop- 
erty of  the  people  are  secure  from  attack,  but  that  he  ought  to 
be  a  jack-of-all-trades,  architect,  engineer,  school-master,  mer- 
chant, theologian,  a  Lady  Bountiful  in  every  parish,  a  Paul  Pry 
in  every  house,  spying,  eaves-dropping,  relieving,  admonishing, 
spending  our  money  for  us  and  choosing  our  opinions  for  us." 
— Essay  on  Southey's  Colloquies. 

"  Meanwhile  the  unquiet  brain  of  Monmouth  was  teeming  with 
strange  designs.  He  had  now  reached  a  time  of  life  at  which 
youth  could  no  longer  be  pleaded  as  an  excuse  for  his  faults  ;  but 
he  was  more  wayward  and  eccentric  than  ever.  Both  in  his 
intellectual  and  in  his  moral  character  there  was  an  abundance 
of  those  fine  qualities  which  may  be  called  luxuries  and  a 
lamentable  deficiency  of  those  solid  qualities  which  are  of  the 
first  necessity.  He  had  brilliant  wit  and  ready  invention  without 
common  sense  and  chivalrous  generosity  and  delicacy  without 
common  honesty." — History  of  England. 

"  It  is,  indeed,  most  extraordinary  that  a  mind  like  Mr. 
Southey's,  a  mind  richly  endowed  in  many  respects  by  nature 
and  highly  cultivated  by  study,  a  mind  which  has  exercised  con- 
siderable influence  on  the  most  enlightened  generation  of  the 
most  enlightened  people  that  ever  existed,  should  be  utterly  des- 
titute of  the  power  of  discerning  truth  from  falsehood.  Yet  such 
is  the  fact.  Government  is  to  Mr.  Southey  one  of  the  fine  arts. 
He  judges  of  a  theory,  of  a  public  measure,  of  a  religion  or  a 
political  party,  of  a  peace  or  a  war,  as  men  judge  of  a  picture  or 
a  statue,  by  the  effect  produced  on  his  imagination.  A  chain  of 
associations  is  to  him  what  a  chain  of  reasoning  is  to  other  men  ; 
and  what  he  calls  his  opinions  are  in  fact  merely  his  tastes." 
— Essay  on  Southey's  Colloquies. 


MACAULAY  453 

14.  Assurance  —  Self-Confidence  —  Egotism.— 

"  Macaulay's  manner  of  writing  gives  the  impression  that  he 
is  wholly  infallible." — Grimm. 

•'  What  at  first  sight  wore  the  air  of  dignity  and  elevation 
in  truth  rather  disagreeably  resembles  the  narrow  assurance  of 
a  man  who  knows  that  he  has  the  battalions  of  public  opin- 
ion with  him.  .  .  .  It  is  oVerweeningness  and  self-con- 
fident will  that  are  the  chief  notes  of  Macaulay's  style." 
—John  Morlev. 

"  His  essays  are  pronounced  in  a  tone  of  perfect  assurance. 
His  writings  have  all  the  stimulus  of  oracular  de- 
cision . "  —  George  Gilfillan. 

•  •  When  we  find  that  he  ignores  all  persons,  however  famous, 
with  whom  he  was  not  intimately  associated  ;  that  he  alludes 
only  twice  to  Dickens  ;  that  he  merely  mentions  Bulwer  to 
say  that  he  has  met  him  ;  that  on  the  rank  and  file  of  his  con- 
temporaries in  literature,  society,  and  politics,  he  is  almost 
entirely  silent,  and  yet  that  he  writes  so  voluminously  and  so 
minutely  about  himself,  his  feelings,  and  his  intentions — how 
is  it  possible  to  avoid  feeling  that  an  egotist  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word  is  exactly  what  Macaulay  was?  " — T.  H.  S. 
Escott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  We  think  that  the  theory  of  Mr.  Mill  rests  altogether  on 
false  principles,  and  that  even  on  those  false  principles  he  does 
not  reason  logically.  Nevertheless  we  do  not  think  it  strange 
that  his  speculations  should  have  filled  the  Utilitarians  with  ad- 
miration. We  have  been  for  some  time  past  inclined  to  suspect 
that  these  people,  whom  some  regard  as  the  lights  of  the  world 
and  others  as  incarnate  demons,  are  in  general  ordinary  men 
with  narrow  understandings  and  little  information.  The  con- 
tempt which  they  express  for  elegant  literature  is  evidently  the 
contempt  of  ignorance." — Essay  on  Milt's  Essay  on  Government. 

"  We  have  for  some  time  past  been  convinced  that  this  was 
really  the  case  ;  and  that,  whenever  their  philosophy  should  be 


454  MACAULAY 

boldly  and  unsparingly  scrutinized,  the  world  would  see  that  it 
had  been  under  a  mistake  respecting  them  [the  Utilitarians]. 
We  have  made  the  experiment  ;  and  it  has  succeeded  beyond 
our  most  sanguine  expectations.  A  chosen  champion  of  the 
school  has  come  forth  against  us.  A  specimen  of  his  logical 
abilities  now  lies  before  us  ;  and  we  pledge  ourselves  to  show 
that  no  prebendary  at  an  anti-Catholic  meeting,  no  true-blue 
baronet  after  the  third  bottle  at  a  Pitt  Club,  ever  displayed  such 
utter  incapacity  of  comprehending  or  answering  an  argument  as 
appears  in  the  speculations  of  this  Utilitarian  apostle." — Essay 
on  the  Utilitarian  Theot  y  of  Government. 


THACKERAY,  1811-1863 

Biographical  Outline. — William  Makepeace  Thackeray, 
born  at  Calcutta,  India,  July  18,  1811  ;  father,  in  the  em- 
ploy of  the  East  India  Company,  dies  when  Thackeray  is  five 
years  old,  and  leaves  him  a  fortune  of  ^£20,000;  in  1816 
Thackeray  is  sent  to  England,  and  is  placed  in  the  famous 
Charter  House  School,  where  he  remains  till  1828  ;  enters 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  February,  1829  ;  while  in 
Cambridge  he  helps  to  edit  a  periodical  called  The  Snob; 
leaves  Cambridge  in  1830,  visits  Paris,  Rome,  Dresden,  and 
Weimar,  and  meets  Goethe  ;  reads  law  for  a  year  or  more  in 
the  Temple ;  is  ambitious  to  become  an  artist,  travels  over 
Europe,  and  studies  art  at  Paris  and  Rome ;  loses  his  fort- 
une within  two  years,  partly  .through  the  failure  of  an  Indian 
bank,  and  mainly  in  an  unsuccessful  newspaper  venture ; 
during  1833-34  he  helps  to  edit  and  partly  owns  a  paper 
called  the  National  Standard ;  resides  in  Paris,  1835-36,  and 
publishes  an  illustrated  folio  called  "Flore  et  Zephyr ;  "  he  is 
forced  to  take  up  literature  as  a  means  of  support,  and  be- 
comes a  regular  and  frequent  contributor  to  Eraser's  Maga- 
zine;  contributes  also  to  the  Times,  the  New  Monthly  Review, 
and  the  Westminster  Review;  under  the  pseudonym  of 
"Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh"  he  contributes  to  Eraser's 
"The  Great  Hoggarty  Diamond"  and  "Barry  Lyndon," 
the  latter  in  1837-38  ;  in  1837  he  marries  Isabella  Shawe, 
who  becomes  insane  a  few  years  later,  and  spends  the  remain- 
der of  her  life  in  retirement,  away  from  her  family  ;  under  the 
pseudonym  of  "Titmarsh"  Thackeray  also  publishes  "The 
Parish  Sketch-Book,"  in  1840,  "The  Second  Funeral  of 

455 


456  THACKERAY 

Napoleon,"  in  1841,  "The  Chronicle  of  the  Drum,"  in 
1841,  and  "  The  Irish  Sketch-Book,"  in  1843;  he  becomes 
connected  with  Punch,  in  1840;  in  Punch  appear  first  the 
"  Snob  Papers  "  then  "  Jeames's  Diary;"  he  then  publishes 
"Vanity  Fair"  as  a  serial  in  twenty-four  monthly  parts, 
beginning  in  January,  1847  ;  Thackeray's  reputation  is  estab- 
lished by  "  Vanity  Fair;  "  he  is  made  widely  known  in  Octo- 
ber, 1847,  by  Charlotte  Bronte,  who  dedicated  to  Thackeray 
the  second  edition  of  (Jane  Eyre)  ;  "  in  1851  he  delivers  in 
America  his  lectures  on  "The  English  Humorists  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century;"  "  Pendennis  "  is  also  published  in 
monthly  numbers,  beginning  in  November,  1848;  his  principal 
connection  with  Punch  ceases  in  1850 ;  he  begins  lecturing 
in  London,  May  22,  1851,  on  George  III.  and  on  the  Eng- 
lish Humorists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  and  has  among 
his  hearers  Carlyle,  Dickens,  Hallam,  Macaulay,  Charlotte 
Bronte,  and  Harriet  Marti neau ;  during  1851  Thackeray 
repeats  the  lectures  in  Manchester,  Oxford,  Cambridge,  and 
Edinburgh;  publishes  "Henry  Esmond"  in  1852,  and  re- 
ceives ^"1,000  for  the  manuscript ;  he  sails  for  America,  Oc- 
tober 30,  1852,  having  Lowell  and  Clough  as  fellow-passen- 
gers ;  delivers  his  lectures  on  the  Humorists  in  Boston,  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Washington,  and  Richmond ; 
returns  to  London  early  in  1853  ;  visits  Paris  and  Baden, 
where  he  begins  "The  Newcomes,"  which  he  publishes  in 
monthly  numbers  from  October,  1853,  to  August,  1855  ;  re- 
ceives ^4,000  for  the  novel ;  sails  for  America  again,  Octo- 
ber 13,  1855,  and  lectures  on  "The  Four  Georges,"  from 
Boston  to  Savannah  ;  both  American  lecture-tours  are  very 
successful  financially ;  Thackeray  returns  to  London  in  April, 
1856;  he  repeats  the  lectures  on  "The  Four  Georges" 
throughout  England  and  Scotland  during  1856,  and  receives 
fifty  guineas  a  night ;  he  stands  for  Parliament  for  Oxford  in 
July,  1857,  but  is  defeated  by  a  slight  majority;  publishes 
"The  Virginians  "  in  monthly  parts  from  November,  1857, 


THACKERAY  457 

to  October,  1859 ;  becomes  a  friend  and  correspondent  of 
Motley  ;  Thackeray  is  attacked  unjustifiably  in  June,  1858, 
by  Edmund  Yates  in  Tou>n  Talk;  Thackeray  demands  and 
secures  Yates's dismissal  from  the  Garrick  Club;  the  result  is 
an  estrangement  between  Thackeray  and  Dickens,  who  had 
tried  to  protect  Yates — an  estrangement  that  ceased  only  a 
week  before  Thackeray's  death ;  Thackeray  becomes  the  first 
editor  of  the  Cornhill  Magazine  in  1859,  and  begins  in  its 
columns  the  publication  of  "  Lovel  the  Widower  "  in  Janu- 
ary, 1860,  together  with  the  first  of  his  "Roundabout  Pa- 
pers; "  he  publishes  "The  Adventures  of  Philip"  in  the 
Cornhill  from  January,  1861,  to  August,  1862  ;  this  is  the 
first  of  his  novels  not  originally  illustrated  by  himself;  he  be- 
comes didactic  and  somewhat  despondent  in  his  later  work; 
he  resigns  the  editorship  of  Cornhill  in  March,  1862,  and  re- 
moves to  a  fine  new  home  at  Palace  Green  ;  dies  there  sud- 
denly and  alone  on  Christmas  eve,  1863  ;  is  buried  in  Ken- 
sal  Green  Cemetery. 

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&  Lincoln,  I  :  389-392. 
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Brimley,  G.,  "Essays."     London,  1882,  Macmillan,  258-269. 
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Masson,  D.,  "  British  Novelists. "     Boston,  1892,  W.  Small,  235-259. 
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Appleton,  385-390. 


458  THACKERAY 

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Green,  1-9. 

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1879,  Harper,  1-210. 

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1891,  W.  Scott,  1-248. 
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Blackett,  2  :  262-282. 
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261-278. 
Berdmore,    S.,    "Scratch    Team  of   Essays."     London,    1883,  W    H. 

Allen  &  Co.,  97-122. 
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42-59- 
Senior,  W.  W.,    "Essays   on    Fiction."     London,    1864,    Longmans    & 

Green,  321-394. 
Dawson,   G.,   "Biographical  Lectures."     London,    1886,    Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  438-450. 
Hutton,     L.,    "  Literary   Landmarks   of   London."     New  York,   1892, 

Harper,  302-307. 
Jerrold,  B.,  "The  Best  of  All  Good  Company."     Boston,  1878,  Sill  & 

Co.,  163-238. 
L'Estrange,   A.  G.,    "History  of    English   Humour."     London,  1878, 

Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :  216-225. 
Parton,    J.,    "Some   Noted   Princes,"  &c.     New  York,   1886,  Crowell, 

52-56. 
Phillips,  S.,  "Essays  from  the  Times."     London,  1851-1854,  Murray, 

2:  320-338. 


THACKERAY  459 

Skelton,  J.,  "Essays  in    History   and    Biography."     Edinburgh,  1883, 

Blackwood,  293-295. 
Smith,  G.   B.,  "Poets   and  Novelists."     New   York,    1876,   Appleton, 

i-56. 
Vaughan,  R.  A.,  "  Essays  and  Remains."    London,  1858,  J.  W.  Parker, 

2:  311-320. 
Duyckinck,    E.    A.,  "  Portrait    Gallery."     New  York,    1875,    Johnson, 

Wilson  &  Co.,  5:  189-198. 
Oliphant,   Mrs.,  "The    Victorian    Age   of    English   Literature."      New 

York,  1892,  Tait,  261-281. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Development  of  English   Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  2:  415-418. 

Harper's  Magazine,  49  :  533-549  (R.  H.   Stoddard). 
North   American    Review,   98 :   624-627  (J.  R.  Lowell) ;    67 :   368-370 

(E.  P.  Whipple) ;  82 :  284  (Pebody) ;  100:  626  (C.  S.  Norton) ;  91  : 

580-582  (Felton). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  15  :  639-641  (Whipple) ;  25  :  247-249  (Howells)  ;  51  ; 

243  (M.  S.  Henry). 

Edinburgh  Review,  87:  46-67;  137:  95-121. 
Christian  Examiner,  60:  102-121  (H.  T.  Tuckerman). 
The  Forum,  18:  326-338  (F.  Harrison). 

Westminster  Review,  74:  500-523;  82:  172-185;  59:  363-368. 
Scribner3!  Monthly,  21 :  535-543  (E.  S.  Nadal). 
Quarterly  Review,  84:  153-185. 
The  Nineteenth  Century,  5  :  35-43  (A.  Trollope). 
Putnam's  Magazine,  6  :  623-627. 
Temple  Bar,  61 :  469-475. 

Eclectic  Magazine,  34 :  96-100  ;  6 :  562-593  ;  2  :  1-6. 
Longman'' s  Magazine,  17:  673-682  (A.  Lang). 
Cornhill  Magazine,  9:  129-132  (Dickens). 

North  British  Re^<iew,  40:  210-265  (H.  H.  Lancaster);  15:  57-89. 
'Saturday  Review,  17:  9-10. 
Dublin  University  Magazine,  64 :  620-627. 
Littelfs   Living  Age,   80:   285-287,    325-328,    413-415,    and   476-477 

(Dickens  in  the  Spectator) ;  18  :  412-426   (Spectator)  ;   36  :  277-280 

(London  Times). 


460  THACKERAY 


PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Keen,  Merciless  Satire— Hatred  of  Shams — 
Hypercriticism. — "  The  satire  of  Thackeray  is  the  recoil  of 
an  exquisite  sensibility  from  the  harsh  touch  of  life.  .  .  . 
He  had  not  merely  a  smiling  contempt  but  a  deadly  hatred  of 
all  manner  of  shams,  an  equally  intense  love  for  every  kind  of 
manliness  and  for  gentlemanliness  as_its  highest  type.  He  had 
an  eye  for  pretension  as  fatally  detective  as  an  acid  for  an 
alkali ;  and  wherever  it  fell,  so  clear  and  seemingly  harmless, 
the  weak  spot  was  sure  to  betray  itself." — Lowell. 

"  Thackeray  appears  at  first  to  have  considered  that  his 
business  was  to  find  fault ;  to  carry  into  literature  the  functions 
of  the  detective  police ;  to  pry  into  the  haunts  and  arrest  the 
persons  of  scoundrels  who  evaded  the  ordinary  operations  of 
the  law.  The  most  fashionable  clubs  and  drawing-rooms  were 
invaded  to  catch  scamps  whom  a  common  policeman  would 
have  sought  in  low  alleys  and  hells.  .  .  .  The  latent 
weaknesses,  foibles,  follies,  vices  of  the  intelligent  and  good 
became  the  objects  of  his  search,  somewhat  to  the  exclusion 
of  their  nobler  and  predominant  qualities,  and  the  result 
was,  in  many  instances,  wofully  partial  estimates  and  ex- 
hibitions of  men  and  women.  The  truth  was  truth  only 
from  the  satirist's  point  of  view." — E.  P.  }V7iipph\ 

"  Thackeray  had  power  to  expose  every  kind  of  lie  and 
humbug.  .  .  .  He  was  a  man  who  had  strong  moral  as 
well  as  intellectual  qualities  and  that  strong  sense  of  justice 
without  which  no  author  ever  became  famous.  .  .  .  To 
those  who  read  the  '  Snob  Papers '  it  was  permitted  to  leaven 
the  inherent  pride  and  snobbishness  of  their  nature  by  the  ab- 
sorption of  those  antidotes  to  pride  and  selfishness  which 
Thackeray  provided.  He  had  an  uncompromising  hatred  of 
wrong." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  In  '  The  Newcomes  '  he  deliberately  states  his  intention  of 


THACKERAY  461 

leaving  the  bad  alone,  poor  fellows,  and  solely  attacking  the 
so-called  good,  .  .  .  the  '  worldly  holy,'  as  Laurence 
Oliphant  afterward  called  them.  .  .  .  The  crusade 
against  this  kind  of  hypocrisy  was  what  Thackeray  really 
enjoyed.  To  satirize  vice  was  not  half  so  attractive  to  him. 
.  .  .  His  detestation  of  humbug  was  so  intense  that  he 
seems  to  forget  that  there  is  some  of  it  which  we  could 
scarcely  do  without." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"He  saw  something  that  was  distasteful,  and  a  man  in- 
stantly became  a  snob  in  his  estimation.  .  .  .  The  little 
courtesies  of  the  world  and  the  little  discourtesies  became 
snobbish  to  him.  A  man  could  not  wear  his  hat  or  carry  his 
umbrella  or  mount  his  horse  without  falling  into  some  error 
ofsnobbism  before  his  hypercritical  eyes." — Anthony  Trol- 
lope. 

"  His  great  service  to  the  world  has  been  in  his  exposure 
of  the  prevailing  faults  of  his  time.  .  .  .  '  The  Book  of 
Snobs'  should  be  read  carefully  at  least  once  a  year." — H. 
H.  Lancaster. 

"  His  pen  alternately,  at  his  own  variable  whim  and  pleas- 
ure, dropped  honey  and  vitriol.  .  .  .  There  were  blent 
together  in  the  nature  of  this  one  writer  the  sweetness  of 
Goldsmith  and  the  withering,  pitiless  scorn  of  Swift.  . 
Sometimes  the  careless  strokes  dealt  around  him  by  the  comic 
censor  blight  as  visibly  as  a  flare  of  lightning.  .  .  .  For 
long  he  was  regarded  as  one  whose  inspiration  was  entirely  of 
the  brain  without  any  promptings  of  the  heart.  He  was  ac- 
cused of  being  a  cold-blooded  cynic,  who  could  sneer  at  hu- 
man sympathies,  but  whose  passionless  nature  was  incapable  of 
arousing  them.  .  .  .  His  hatred  of  swindlers — of  gigan- 
tic arch-scoundrels — burst  out  in  'The  Hoggarty  Diamond,' 
and  proclaimed  itself  in  his  works  between  that  and  '  The 
Newcomes.'  The  satirist  was  no  respecter  of  persons;  the 
tyranny  and  infamy  of  a  nobleman  were  described  as  truth- 
fully as  the  vulgar  ignorance  of  a  waiting- man  or  lodging- 


462  THACKERAY 

house  keeper.  It  was  Thackeray  who  tore  from  social  de- 
pravity her  two-fold  robe,  one  side  of  rags  and  one  of  spangled 
purple,  and  displayed  her  hateful  proportions."—;/.  C.  Jeaf- 
freson. 

"  A  new  delineator  of  life  was  at  work  in  society,  and  one 
whose  pen  was  as  keen  as  the  dissecting  knife  of  the  surgeon. 
An  author  had  sprung  up  who  dared  to  shame  society  by  a 
strong  and  manly  scorn.  .  .  .  Thackeray  manages  to 
find  the  one  vulnerable  point  in  our" armor;  he  introduces  the 
rapier  of  his  sarcasm,  and  we  are  slain.  .  .  .  Surely,  the 
world  should  be  the  better  for  the  fearless  work  which  this 
man  has  accomplished.  .  .  .  His  wit  does  not  preclude 
him  from  being  fair  and  just.  .  .  .  With  all  his  keen 
sense  of  the  ridiculous,  and  his  scathing  powers  of  invective, 
there  is  no  one  instance  where,  for  the  sake  of  the  brilliancy 
of  his  satire,  he  ever  cast  a  slur  upon  truly  philanthropic  labor. 
When  he  laughs  we  know  he  will  do  it  fairly." — G.  B.  Smith. 

"  He  was  very  fond  of  looking  into  the  tricks  of  genius. 
He  liked  to  be  by  when  the  preacher  arranged  his  last  curl 
before  mounting  the  pulpit  and  when  the  beadle  was  arrang- 
ing his  surplice  so  that  it  might  fall  in  the  best  folds.  .  .  . 
A  man  of  the  world,  great  and  full  of  gracefulness,  full  of  fun  ; 
cri ticising  bishops,  millionnaires,  and  tailors  .  .  .  a  man 
who  walked  through  life  carrying  the  lamp  of  an  upright  char- 
acter, a  pure  spirit,  and  a  truth-telling  tongue.  .  .  .  He 
had  a  fine  eye  for  a  snob,  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  soci- 
ety. He  read  it  all,  and  knew  where  to  find  the  particular 
bone — the  snob  bone.  .  .  .  Without  exaggeration  or  fuss 
he  painted  us  such  a  picture  of  life  and  gave  us  such  lessons  in 
morals  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  read  them  without  get- 
ting wiser." — George  Dawson. 

"  His  men,  if  not  absurd,  are  tyrants  or  rogues  ;  his  women, 
if  not  fools,  are  intriguers  or  flirts ;  he  paints  those  who  pur- 
sue nothing  but  wealth  and  those  who  pursue  nothing  but 
pleasure.  .  .  .  He  paints  the  former  as  vain,  greedy, 


THACKERAY  463 

purse-proud,  oppressive  and  overbearing  in  prosperity,  grovel- 
ling and  base  in  adversity,  and  envious  and  suspicious  at  all 
times.  He  describes  the  latter  as  frivolous,  heartless,  and 
false,  with  as  much  selfishness  and  vanity  and  malignity  as 
their  Russell  Square  neighbors,  though  concealed  under  a 
smoother  exterior.  .  .  .  He  has  penetrated  into  the 
lowest  cells  of  pride,  vanity,  and  selfishness,  and  has  laid  open 
some  of  the  secrets  of  the  human  prison-house  which  never 
were  revealed  before.  .  .  .  His  favorite  amusement  is 
unmasking  hypocrisy.  He  delights  to  show  the  selfishness  of 
kindness,  the  pride  of  humility,  the  consciousness  of  sim- 
plicity."—W.  W.  Senior. 

11  The  weak  and  wicked  phases  of  human  development  were 
brought  too  much  into  the  light,  while  the  better  phases  were 
kept  in  shadow.  .  .  .  But  he  took  no  satyr's  delight  in 
the  offensive  scenes  and  graceless  characters  ;  he  was  even 
sadder  than  the  reader  could  be  at  the  horrible  prospects  before 
him;  .  .  .  he  chastised  in  no  ill-natured  or  malicious  vein, 
but  in  love;  he  cauterized  only  to  cure." — Parke  Godwin. 

One  critic  calls  him  "  usefully  and  delightfully  cynical," 
while  Hannay  says  :  "  He  combined  Addison's  love  of  virtue 
with  Johnson's  hatred  of  cant — Horace  Walpole's  lynx-like 
eye  for  the  mean  and  ridiculous  with  the  gentleness  and  wide 
charity  of  Goldsmith  for  mankind  as  a  whole."  But,  like 
most  writers,  Thackeray  knew  himself  better  than  did  any  of 
his  critics,  and  he  best  expresses  the  general  average  of  the 
criticisms  already  given.  In  the  introduction  to  "  Vanity 
Fair"  he  says:  "One  is  bound  to  speak  the  truth  as  one 
knows  it,  whether  one  mounts  cap  and  bells  or  a  shovel  hat ; 
and  a  deal  of  disagreeable  matter  must  come  out  in  the  course 
of  such  an  undertaking. "  And  in  1854  Thackeray  wrote  to 
a  friend  :  "I  suppose  we  all  begin  by  being  too  savage.  / 
know  one  who  did.  ...  I  hate  Juvenal.  I  mean  I 
think  him  a  truculent  brute  ;  and  I  love  Horace  better  than 
you  do.  ...  I  admire  Swift's  power,  but  I  don't  ad- 


464  THACKERAY 

mire  that  kind  of  power  so  much  as  I  did  fifteen   years  ago. 
.     .     .     Love  is  a  higher  intellectual  exercise  than  hatred." 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  seldom  drank  too  much,  and  never  was  late  to  business 
or  huddled  over  his  toilet,  however  brief  had  been  his  sleep  or 
severe  his  headache.  In  a  word,  he  was  as  scrupulously  whited 
as  any  sepulchre  in  the  whole  bills  of  mortality." — The  New- 
comes. 

"  No,  no  ;  my  master  was  a  man  of  forty  now,  and  behayved 
himself  as  sich.  .  .  .  He  swoar  more  and  lowder  than  any- 
one there  ;  he  abyoused  the  waiters,  the  wittles,  the  wines.  With 
his  glass  in  his  i,  he  staired  at  everybody.  ...  He  talked 
about  '  my  carridge,'  '  my  currier,'  '  my  servant ; '  and  he  did 
wright.  I've  always  found  through  life  that  if  you  wish  to  be 
respected  by  English  people,  you  must  be  insalent  to  them, 
especially  if  you  are  a  sprig  of  nobiliaty.  We  like  being  insulted 
by  noblemen — it  shows  they're  familiar  with  us.  Law  bless  us  ! 
.  .  .  While  my  master  was  hectoring  in  the  parlor  at  Balong, 
pretious  airs  I  gave  myself  in  the  kitching  ;  and  the  consequints 
was  that  we  were  better  served  and  moar  liked  than  many  pip- 
pie  with  twice  our  merit." — Memoirs  of  C.  J.  Yellowplush. 

"  If  ever  our  cousins,  the  Smigsmags,  asked  me  to  meet  Lord 
Longears,  I  should  like  to  take  an  opportunity  after  dinner  and 
say,  in  the  most  good-natured  way  in  the  world  :  '  Sir,  Fortune 
makes  you  a  present  of  a  number  of  thousand  pounds  every  year. 
The  ineffable  wisdom  of  our  ancestors  has  placed  you  as  a  chief 
and  hereditary  legislator  over  me.  Our  admirable  Constitution 
(the  pride  of  Britons  and  envy  of  surrounding  nations)  obliges 
me  to  receive  you  as  my  senator,  superior  and  guardian.  Your 
eldest  son,  Fitz-Heehaw,  is  sure  of  a  place  in  Parliament;  your 
younger  sons,  the  DeBrays,  .  .  .  will  represent  us  in  for- 
eign courts.  These  prizes  our  admirable  Constitution  (the  pride 
and  envy  of,  etc.)  pronounces  to  be  your  due  ;  without  count  of 
your  dulness,  your  vices,  your  selfishness,  or  your  entire  in- 
capacity and  folly.'  " — Concluding  Observations  on  Snobs. 


THACKERAY  465 

2.  Exact  Portraiture— Natural  Characterization. 

— "  Thackeray,  in  his  more  elaborate  works,  always  paints 
character,  and  Dickens  single  peculiarities.  Thackeray's 
personages  are  all  men,  those  of  Dickens  personified  oddi- 
ties. The  one  is  an  artist,  the  other  a  caricaturist.  . 
Thackeray's  round  of  character  is  very  limited,  but  his  char- 
acters are  masterpieces,  always  governed  by  those  average 
motives  and  acted  upon  by  those  average  sentiments  which 
all  men  have  in  common.  They  never  act  like  heroes  and 
heroines  but  like  men  and  women." — Lowell. 

"  It  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  writer  of  fiction  of  equal 
excellence  who  had  so  little  of  the  inventive  or  imaginative 
faculty.  Keenness  of  observation  and  a  nice  appreciation  of 
character  supplied  him  with  all  the  materials  of  his  creations. 
He  wrote  from  the  experience  of  life.  The  key  to  his  works 
is  to  be  found  in  his  life.  .  .  .  The  features  of  the  old 
soldier  [Colonel  Newcorae]  appear  before  us  as  faithfully  and 
as  naturally  as  though  limned  by  the  hand  of  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds.  .  .  .  The  faculty  is  very  rare  of  being  able 
to  transfer  the  lineaments  of  commonplace  people  in  such  a 
manner  as  that  others  will  care  to  study  them.  Yet  this  is 
the  result  that  Thackeray  achieves,  and  that  without  labor. 
Nothing  transcendental  or  that  which  is  beyond  human  nat- 
ure is  thrown  in  as  a  means  of  bribing  the  reader  into  a 
closer  relationship.  As  men  passed  Thackeray  he  observed 
them;  but  in  doing  so  he  felt  that  to  add  to  the  original 
would  destroy  the  identity,  and  the  consequence  of  his  con- 
summate art  is  that  throughout  the  whole  of  his  varied  picture- 
gallery  there  is  no  portrait  which  bears  the  impress  of  falsity 
or  distortion." — G.  B.  Smith. 

"It  is  Thackeray's  aim  to  represent  life  as  it  is  actually 
and  historically — men  and  women  as  they  are,  in  those  sit- 
uations in  which  they  are  usually  placed,  with  that  mixture 
of  good  and  evil,  strength  and  foible,  which  is  to  be  found 
in  their  characters,  and  liable  only  to  those  incidents  which 
30 


466  THACKERAY 

are  of  ordinary  occurrence.      He  will  have  no  faultless  char- 
acters, no  demi-gods — nothing  but  men    and  brethren. "- 
David  Masson. 

"  He  has,  in  a  very  singular  manner,  the  power  of  seizing 
humors  or  peculiarities.  .  .  .  Never  before,  we  think,  in 
fiction,  did  characters  so  uniformly  speak  exactly  like  the  men 
and  women  in  real  life  [as  in  'Esmond']." — H.  H.  Lan- 
caster. 

"  If  he  sets  himself  to  draw  a  blackguard,  he  is  too  true  an 
artist  to  omit  the  redeeming  points  that  are  to  be  found  in 
almost  every  case.  .  .  .  Thackeray  desired  to  represent 
an  unvarnished  picture  of  man  as  he  really  is." — Mrs.  Oli- 
phant. 

"In  'Esmond1  Thackeray  reproduces  for  us  the  style  in 
which  men  wrote  and  talked  in  the  days  of  Queen  Anne.  To 
reproduce  the  forgotten  phraseology,  to  remember  always,  not 
how  his  age  would  express  an  idea,  but  how  Steele  or  Swift  or 
Addison  would  have  expressed  it,  might  have  been  pro- 
nounced impossible  of  accomplishment.  Yet  in  '  Esmond ' 
Thackeray  did  accomplish  it,  and  with  perfect  success." — H. 
/.  Nicoll. 

"  I  know  of  no  author  save  Balzac,  whom  he  resembles  in 
other  points,  whose  characterizations  of  men  and  of  incidents 
are  so  sharply  defined,  so  nicely  and  finely  cut,  so  chiselled  as 
if  from  the  block,  like  a  piece  of  statuary,  and  yet  so  free  and 
flowing  and  full  of  animation,  the  most  unlike  statuary  of  any- 
thing in  the  world." — Parke  Godwin. 

"  George  Osborne,  Dobbin,  and  Amelia  are  characters 
almost  literally  true  to  nature.  .  .  .  His  page  swarms 
with  personages  whom  we  recognize  at  once  as  genuine." 
— E.  P.  IVhipple. 

"  Whoever  it  is  that  speaks  in  his  pages,  does  it  not  seem 
that  such  a  person  would  certainly  have  used  such  words  on 
such  an  occasion  ?  Whether  it  be  a  great  duke,  such  as  he 
who  was  to  have  married  Beatrix,  or  a  mean  chaplain,  such  as 


THACKERAY  467 

Tusher  or  Captain  Steele,  the  humorist,  they  talk — not  as 
they  would  have  talked,  probably,  of  which  I  am  no  judge — 
but  as  we  feel  that  they  might  have  talked." — Anthony  Trol- 
lope. 

Perhaps  Henley  unconsciously  testifies  to  Thackeray's  fidel- 
ity of  portraiture  when  he  says :  "Esmond  apart,  there  is 
scarcely  a  man  or  woman  in  Thackeray  whom  it  is  possible  to 
love  unreservedly  or  thoroughly  respect. ' '  A  more  favorable 
critic,  writing  anonymously,  says  of  Thackeray's  portraits : 
"  In  variety,  truth,  and  consistency  they  are  unrivalled.  They 
are  not  caricatures,  they  are  not  men  of  humors ;  they  are  the 
men  and  women  whom  we  daily  meet ;  they  are,  in  the  fullest 
sense  of  the  word,  representative ;  and  yet  they  are  drawn 
so  sharply  and  finely  that  we  never  could  mistake  or  con- 
found them."  As  in  considering  his  satire,  so  here,  we  find 
the  best  summary  in  Thackeray's  own  words.  In  "  Catherine" 
he  writes:  "The  only  way  in  which  poor  authors  can  act 
honestly  for  the  public  and  themselves  is  to  paint  thieves  as 
they  are ;  not  dandy,  poetical,  rose-water  thieves,  but  real, 
downright  scoundrels,  leading  scoundrelly  lives,  drunken, 
profligate,  dissolute,  low,  as  scoundrels  will  be."  And  again 
he  writes  :  ' '  My  rascals  are  no  milk-and-water  rascals,  I 
promise  you." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  '  Where  is  Sir  Pitt  Crawley  ? '  said  Miss  Sharp,  majestically. 

"  '  He,  he  !  I'm  Sir  Pitt  Crawley.  Reklect  you  owe  me  a  pint 
for  bringing  down  your  luggage.  He,  he  !  Ask  Tinker  if  I 
aynt.  Mrs.  Tinker,  Miss  Sharp  ;  Miss  Governess,  Mrs.  Char- 
woman. Ho,  ho  !  ' 

"  The  lady  addressed  as  Mrs.  Tinker  at  this  moment  made  her 
appearance  with  a  pipe  and  a  paper  of  tobacco,  for  which  she 
had  been  dispatched. 

' '  '  Where's  the  farden  ? '  said  he.  '  I  gave  you  three-half-pence. 
Where's  the  change,  old  Tinker  ?  ' 

"  '  There  !  '  replied  Mrs.  Tinker,  flinging  down  the  coin ;  '  it's 


468  THACKERAY 

only  baronets  as  cares  about  farthings.  ...  He  never  gave 
away  a  farthing  in  his  life,'  growled  Mrs.  Tinker. 

"  '  Never,  and  never  will ;  it's  against  my  principle.'  " — Vanity 
Fair. 

"  Mr.  Foker's  behavior  was  quite  different.  He  inquired  for 
Rummer  and  the  cold  in  his  nose,  told  Mrs.  Rummer  a  riddle, 
asked  Miss  Rummer  when  she  would  be  ready  to  marry  him,  and 
paid  his  compliments  to  Miss  Brett,  the  other  young  lady  in  the 
bar,  all  in  a  minute  of  time,  and  with  a  liveliness  and  facetious- 
ness  which  set  all  these  ladies  in  a  giggle  ;  and  he  gave  a  cluck 
expressive  of  great  satisfaction  as  he  tossed  off  his  mixture,  which 
Miss  Rummer  prepared  and  handed  to  him." — Pendennis. 

"  As  she  is  not  a  heroine  there  is  no  need  to  describe  her 
person.  Indeed,  I  am  afraid  that  her  nose  was  rather  short  than 
otherwise  and  her  cheeks  a  great  deal  too  round  and  red  for  a 
heroine,  but  her  face  blushed  with  rosy  health  and  her  lips  with 
the  freshness  of  smiles,  and  she  had  a  pair  of  eyes  which  sparkled 
with  the  brightest  and  honestest  good-humor,  except  indeed 
when  they  filled  with  tears,  and  that  was  a  great  deal  too  often, 
for  the  silly  thing  would  cry  over  a  dead  canary  bird  or  over  a 
mouse." —  Vanity  Fair. 


3.  Artistic  Ease — Grace— Finish. — "His  manner  is 
the  perfection  of  conversational  writing  ;  graceful,  yet  vigor- 
ous; adorably  artificial,  yet  incomparably  sound, 
easily  and  happily  rhythmical,  yet  full  of  color ;  ...  in- 
stinct with  urbanity  and  instinct  with  charm,  it  is  a  type  of 
high-bred  English,  a  climax  of  literary  art.  ...  He  was 
a  rare  artist  in  words.  .  .  .  Setting  aside  Cardinal  New- 
man's, the  style  he  wrote  is  certainly  less  open  to  criticism 
than  that  of  any  other  modern  Englishman.  .  .  .  He 
was  neither  super-eloquent,  like  Mr.  Ruskin,  nor  a  German- 
ized Jeremy,  like  Carlyle.  .  .  .  He  neither  dallied  with 
antitheses,  like  Macaulay,  nor  rioted  in  verbal  vulgarisms  with 
Dickens ;  he  abstained  from  technology  as  carefully  as  George 
Eliot  indulged  in  it.  ...  He  wrote  as  a  very  prince  among 
talkers,  and  he  interfused  and  impenetrated  English  with  the 


THACKERAY  469 

elegant  and  cultured  fashion  of  Queen  Anne." — W.  E.  Hen- 
ley. 

"  Surely  that  style,  so  fresh,  so  rich,  so  full  of  surprises — 
that  style  which  stamps  as  classical  even  his  fragments  of  slang, 
and  perpetually  astonishes  and  delights — would  alone  give 
immortality  to  an  author  even  had  he  little  to  say." — An- 
drew Lang. 

"  The  grace,  flexibility,  and  easy  elegance  of  the  style  are 
especially  notable.  It  is  utterly  without  pretension,  and  par- 
takes of  the  absolute  sincerity  of  the  writer  ;  it  is  talk  in 
print,  seemingly  as  simple  as  the  most  familiar  private  chat, 
yet  as  delicate  in  its  felicities  as  the  most  elaborate  composi- 
tion. .  .  .  It  ['  The  Newcomes  ']  seems  written  with  a 
pen  diamond-pointed,  so  glittering  and  incisive  is  its  slight- 
est touch."—  E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  There  is  a  certain  Saxon  flavor  and  colloquial  ease  in  Mr. 
Thackeray's  best  writing  which  forms  his  chief  literary  attrac- 
tion, and  is  the  combined  result  of  a  familiarity  with  good 
English  literature  and  an  absence  of  that  conventional  erudi- 
tion which  is  so  apt  to  give  a  pedantic  twinge  to  style." — 
H.  T.  Tucker  man. 

"  Thackeray's  style  is  beyond  praise — so  easy,  so  limpid, 
showing  everywhere  by  unobtrusive  allusions  how  rich  he  was 
in  modern  culture ;  it  has  the  highest  charm  of  gentlemanly 
conversation.  And  it  was  natural  to  him,  his  early  works 
being  as  perfect,  as  low  in  tone,  as  the  latest.  He  was  in  all 
respects  the  most  finished  example  we  have  of  what  is  called 
'  a  man  of  the  world.'  " — Lowell. 

"  Addison's  style  suggests  it,  but  Addison's  was  more 
artificial ;  Goethe's  had  much  of  the  same  clearness,  but 
Goethe's  was  more  staid  and  stately  ;  Fielding's  had  the  same 
naturalness,  but  was  at  times  too  careless  and  hurried,  and,  in 
fact,  we  can  only  speak  of  it  as  Thackeray's  own — original, 
vigorous,  natural,  limpid,  idiomatic,  and  flexible — a  perfect 
vehicle  for  the  man's  peculiar  spirit." — Parke  Godwin. 


470  THACKERAY 

"  Nobody  in  our  day  wrote,  I  should  say,  with  such  perfec- 
tion of  style."  Carlyle. 

"  There  is  something  in  the  exquisite  finish  and  harmony  of 
'Esmond  '  which  one  can  only  express  by  the  epithet  artistic ; 
it  is  a  pure  combination  of  perfect  taste  and  perfect  workman- 
ship.''—^™. Oliphant. 

' '  Confessedly,  at  the  last,  he  was  the  greatest  master  of  pure 
English  in  our  day.  His  style  is  never  ornate,  ...  is 
never  forced  or  loaded,  only  entirely  appropriate  and  entirely 
beautiful." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

Another  declares  that  "  there  may  have  been  men  of 
greater  genius  than  Thackeray  ;  there  may  have  been  more 
forcible  writers  than  he ;  but  no  one  has  approached  him  in 
the  command  of  polished,  idiomatic  English  in  all  its  varie- 
ties." A  contributor  to  the  Athentzum  calls  Thackeray's  dic- 
tion "agreeable,  manly,  colloquial,  English — the  English  of 
cultivated  men,  but  still  with  as  little  bookishness  about  it  as 
possible — such  is  the  clear  atmosphere  we  breathe  in  reading 
him.  Very  sparing  in  imagery,  perfectly  free  from  conceits." 
Skelton  calls  him  "the  most  finished  literary  artist  of  his 
age  ;  "  and  as  early  as  1839  Dr.  McKenziesaid  :  "  He  writes 
the  best  and  purest  English  of  any  author  now  living."  Of 
his  own  profession  Thackeray  once  wrote :  "  We  are  but 
tradesmen,  working  for  bread  and  not  for  righteousness'  sake. 
Let's  try  and  work  honestly  ;  but  don't  let  us  be  prating 
pompously  about  our  '  sacred  calling. '  ' 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  sun  shines  to-day  as  he  did  when  he  first  began  shining  ; 
and  the  birds  in  the  tree  overhead,  while  I  am  writing,  sing  very 
much  the  same  notes  they  have  sung  ever  since  they  were  finches. 
.  .  .  There  may  be  nothing  new  under  and  including  the  sun  ; 
but  it  looks  fresh  every  morning,  and  we  rise  with  it  to  toil,  hope, 
scheme,  laugh,  struggle,  love,  suffer,  until  the  night  comes  and 
quiet.  And  then  will  wake  Morrow  and  the  eyes  that  look  on  it ; 
and  so  da  capo" — The  Newcomes. 


THACKERAY  471 

"  I  fancy  poor  Congreve's  theatre  is  a  temple  of  Pagan  delights 
and  mysteries  not  permitted  except  among  heathens  ;  .  .  . 
when  the  libertine  hero  carries  off  the  beauty  in  the  play,  and  the 
dotard  is  laughed  to  scorn  for  having  the  young  wife ;  .  .  . 
when  Mr.  Punch,  that  godless  old  rebel,  breaks  every  law  and 
laughs  at  it  with  odious  triumph,  outwits  his  lawyer,  bullies  the 
beadle,  knocks  his  wife  about  the  head,  and  hangs  the  hangman — 
don't  you  see  .  .  .  the  Pagan  protest  ?" — English  Humorists. 

"  But  where  is  the  road  and  its  merry  incidents  of  life  ?  Is 
there  no  Chelsea  or  Greenwich  for  the  old  honest  pimple-nosed 
coachmen  ?  I  wonder  where  they  are,  those  good  fellows  ?  Is  old 
Weller  alive  or  dead  ?  and  the  waiters,  yea,  and  the  inns  at  which 
they  waited  and  the  cold  rounds  of  beef  inside  and  the  stunted 
ostler,  with  his  blue  nose  and  clinking  pail,  where  is  he,  and 
where  is  his  generation  ?  To  those  great  geniuses  now  in  petti- 
coats who  shall  write  novels  for  the  beloved  reader's  children, 
these  men  and  things  will  be  as  much  legend  and  history  as  Mi- 
nerva or  Coeur  de  Lion  or  Jack  Sheppard.  .  .  .  Alas  !  we  shall 
never  hear  the  horn  sing  at  midnight  or  see  the  pike-gates  fly 
open  any  more." —  Vanity  Fair, 

4.  Familiar  Comment. — Self-Suggestion. — Unlike 
other  great  masters  of  dramatic  art,  Thackeray  frequently 
allows  himself  to  comment  upon  his  own  characters.  In 
the  preface  to  "  Pendennis "  he  says,  "It  is  a  kind  of 
confidential  talk  between  writer  and  reader.  ...  In 
the  course  of  his  volubility  the  writer  must  of  necessity  lay 
bare  his  own  weaknesses,  vanities,  peculiarities."  His  critics 
have  generally  condemned  this  trait  as  a  blemish  in  an  other- 
wise almost  perfect  style.  Anthony  Trollope  says  :  "  Thack- 
eray, too,  has  a  strong  flavor  of  Thackeray.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  his  most  besetting  sin  in  style — the  little  ear-mark 
by  which  he  is  most  conspicuous — is  a  certain  affected  famil- 
iarity. He  indulges  too  frequently  in  little  confidences  with 
individual  readers,  in  which  pretended  allusions  to  himself  are 
numerous.  ...  In  the  short  contributions  to  periodicals 
on  which  he  tried  his  'prentice  hand,  such  addresses  were 
natural  and  efficacious ;  but  in  a  larger  work  of  fiction  they 


4/2  THACKERAY 

cause  an  absence  of  that  dignity  to  which  even  a  novel  may 
aspire."  Whipple,  who  is  so  warm  an  admirer  of  Thackeray, 
observes  that  "  the  continual  presence  of  the  writer  himself, 
making  himself  the  companion  of  the  reader — gossiping,  hint- 
ing, sneering,  laughing,  crying,  as  the  narrative  proceeds — 
combine  to  produce  an  effect  which  nobody,  to  say  the  least, 
ever  found  dull."  A  writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  is 
more  positive  in  condemning  this  trait.  He  says :  "Mr. 
Thackeray  indulges  in  the  bad  practice  of  commenting  on  his 
dramatis  persona.  He  is  perpetually  pointing  out  to  us  the 
generosity  of  Dobbin,  the  brutality  of  the  Osbornes,  the  vanity 
of  Joseph  Sedley,  and  so  on,  instead  of  leaving  us  to  find  out 
their  qualities  from  their  actions." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  man  could  be  otherwise  than  happy  to  be  allowed  a 
momentary  embrace  of  two  such  precious  fingers  ?  When  a  gen- 
tleman so  favors  me,  I  always  ask,  mentally,  why  he  has  taken 
the  trouble  at  all,  and  regret  that  I  have  not  had  the  presence  of 
mind  to  poke  one  finger  against  his  two.  If  I  were  worth  ten 
thousand  a  year,  ...  I  cannot  help  thinking  he  would  have 
favored  me  with  the  whole  palm." — The  Newcomes. 

"  No,  we  are  not  monsters  of  crime  or  angels  walking  the 
earth — at  least  I  know  one  of  us  who  isn't,  as  can  be  shown  any 
day  at  home  if  the  knife  won't  cut  or  the  mutton  comes  up  raw. 
.  .  .  At  the  time  when  this  story  begins,  I  say,  Lovel  had  his 
faults — which  of  us  has  not  ?  He  had  buried  his  wife,  having 
notoriously  been  henpecked  by  her.  How  many  men  and  breth- 
ren are  like  him  !  He  had  a  good  fortune — I  wish  I  had  as  much 
— though  I  dare  say  many  people  are  ten  times  as  rich.  He  was 
a  good-looking  fellow  enough  ;  though  that  depends,  ladies,  upon 
whether  you  like  a  fair  man  or  a  dark  one." — Lovel  the  Widower. 

"  And,  as  we  bring  our  characters  forward,  I  will  ask  leave,  as 
a  man  and  a  brother,  not  only  to  introduce  them,  but  occasional- 
ly to  step  down  from  the  platform  and  talk  about  them  ;  if  they 
are  good  and  kindly,  to  love  them  and  shake  them  by  the  hand  : 
if  they  are  silly,  to  laugh  at  them  confidentially  in  the  reader's 


THACKERAY  473 

sleeve  ;  if  they  are  wicked  and  heartless,  to  abuse  them  in  the 
strongest  terms  which  politeness  admits  of." —  Vanity  Fair. 


5.  Sympathy — Sincerity — Manliness. — In  the  early 
days  of  his  authorship  Thackeray  was  frequently  called  cyn- 
ical. But  any  critic  who  should  make  that  charge  to-day 
would  convict  himself  of  almost  total  ignorance  of  Thack- 
eray's best  work. 

"  We  question  much  if  society  will  ever  be  ministered  to 
by  a  physician  who  will  so  sincerely  compassionate  the  sores 
it  was  his  duty  to  probe.  .  .  .  [We  are  impressed  with] 
the  open  candor  and  gentlemanliness  and  the  indulging  gen- 
tleness and  truth  of  his  character.  .  .  .  Kindliness  marked 
his  relations  with  the  meanest  of  his  class.  ...  It  pained 
him  beyond  measure  to  refuse  the  manuscripts  of  his  corre- 
spondents [when  he  was  editor  of  the  Cornhill~\,  especially  the 
poorer  class  of  them — a  tenderness  that  he  expresses  in  his 
paper  '  Thorns  in  the  Cushion.'  .  .  .  It  is  said  that  he 
frequently  sent  the  money  out  of  his  own  pocket  to  needy  con- 
tributors and  their  contributions  to  the  waste-basket.  .  .  . 
He  fulminated  his  anathemas,  not  because  he  had  tried  any- 
thing or  found  anything  wanting,  but  because  the  human  race 
were  going  after  Solomon's  gods  and  pampering  the  same  ap- 
petites and,  unlike  him,  appearing  to  be  immensely  satisfied. 
The  effect  of  his  writings  must  surely  be  to  make  honest  men 
hate  all  manner  of  cant." — -J.  C.  Watt. 

"The  special  text  from  which  Thackeray  preached  was  not 
past  or  future  ideal  but  present  and  living  goodness  and 
beauty.  .  .  .  He  levelled  the  keenest  satire  and  most 
biting  irony  equally  against  ostentation  of  soul,  speciosity  of 
life,  and  falseness  of  heart.  ...  A  gentleman  in  heart 
and  speech,  he  had  no  sympathy  with  swagger  of  any  kind. 
It  has  been  often  urged  against  him  that  he  does  not 
make  us  think  better  of  our  fellow-men.  No,  truly.  But  he 
does  what  is  far  greater  than  this — he  makes  us  think  worse  of 


474  THACKERAY 

ourselves.  .  .  .  The  whole  tendency  of  his  writings  has 
invariably  been  to  inspire  reverence  for  manliness  and  purity 
and  truth." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

"Although  from  his  experience  of  life  he  was  completely 
desilhisione,  the  well  of  natural  tenderness  was  never  dried  in 
his  heart.  He  rejoiced,  with  a  fresh,  boyish  delight,  in  every 
evidence  of  an  unspoiled  nature  in  others — in  every  utterance 
which  denoted  what  may  have  seemed  to  him  overfaith  in 
the  good.  The  more  he  was  saddened  by  his  knowledge  of 
human  weakness  and  folly,  the  more  gratefully  he  welcomed 
strength,  virtue,  sincerity.  His  eyes  never  unlearned  the 
habit  of  that  quick  moisture  which  honors  the  true  word  and 
noble  deed." — Bayard  Taylor. 

"  His  humanity  was  the  crown  and  glory  of  his  work. 
He  was  one  of  those  men  who  are  naturally  full  of 
sensibility  to  a  degree.  .  .  .  Selfishness  was  as  foreign  to 
him  as  insincerity.  .  .  .  To  veil  at  times  this  side  of  his 
character  was  essential,  in  order  to  give  play  to  that  satire 
which  kills.  .  .  .  Men  who  understood  him  best  knew 
that  it  cost  him  an  effort  to  subdue  that  part  of  his  nature 
which  hastened  to  sympathize  with  others.  .  .  .  What- 
soever was  good,  honest,  and  true  found  in  him  a  defender ; 
whatsoever  was  base,  unmanly,  or  false  shrank  abashed  from 
his  presence.  A  man  with  less  pretence,  less  assumption,  less 
sham  never  existed.  .  .  .  He  is  a  man  of  feeling  in  the 
fullest  sense  of  that  word  ;  for  he  loves  all  living  with  the  heart 
of  a  brother ;  his  soul  rushes  forth  in  sympathy  with  sadness 
and  sorrow,  with  goodness  or  grandeur,  over  all  creation." 
— G.  B.  Smith. 

"  [He  is]  the  first  social  regenerator  of  the  day,  .  .  .  the 
very  master  of  that  working  corps  who  would  restore  to  recti- 
tude the  warped  state  of  things.  .  .  .  He  resembles  Field- 
ing as  an  eagle  does  a  vulture." — Charlotte  Bronte. 

Skelton,  Thackeray's  correspondent  and  intimate  friend, 
speaks  of  him  as  "that  noble,  simple  gentleman,  ...  a 


THACKERAY  475 

pure,  healthy,  honest,  boyishly  noble  and  chivalrous  soul,  .  .  . 
tender,  gentle,  upright,  true  in  thought  and  deed."  At 
Thackeray's  death  Punch,  to  which  he  had  been  so  long  a 
contributor,  called  him  "a  brave,  true,  honest  gentleman, 
whom  no  pen  but  his  own  could  depict  as  those  who  knew 
him  best  could  desire,"  and  contained  a  poem  on  Thackeray 
by  Shirley  Brooks,  from  which  we  quote  one  stanza : 

"  He  was  a  cynic  !     No  !     By  his  life,  all  wrought 

Of  generous  acts,  mild  words,  and  gentle  ways ; 
His  heart  wide  open  to  all  kindly  thought, 

His  hand  so  quick  to  give,  his  tongue  to  praise." 

In  1859,  four  years  before  Thackeray's  death,  we  find  a 
writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  thus  expressing  the  best  sen- 
timent of  his  time  in  regard  to  the  great  novelist :  "  England 
may  regard  it  as  some  proof  of  her  moral  soundness  that  her 
greatest  novelist  is,  in  all  his  sentiment  and  sympathies,  the 
deadly  enemy  of  hypocrisy  but  the  constant  friend  of  virtue. " 
Another  anonymous  critic  writes :  "  It  is  this  constant  quiver- 
ing of  a  note  of  tenderness  amidst  all  the  despicable  and  shame- 
ful things  which  he  attributes  to  his  worst  characters  that 
really  raises  Thackeray's  satire  so  high  above  the  level  of  all 
preceding  satire.  .  .  .  Thackeray  is  always  trembling 
with  sensitiveness  as  well  as  flashing  with  rage.  He  trains  our 
nerves  to  a  finer  and  more  delicate  sense  of  tune  before  he 
dashes  his  hand  with  a  fierce  jar  over  the  strings.  He  teaches 
us  to  recognize  every  sweet  note,  even  when  it  is  all  but  lost 
in  the  discordant  scream  of  passion.  He  relieves  the  mind 
by  long  intervals  of  genial  insight  before  he  rends  it  with  his 
imaginative  fury  at  the  lurking  baseness  or  at  the  imbecility  of 
innocence." 

In  his  "English  Humorists"  Thackeray  discusses  this  very 
quality,  and  justly  says  :  "  The  humourous  writer,  besides  ap- 
pealing to  your  sense  of  ridicule,  professes  to  awaken  and  di- 
rect your  love,  your  pity,  your  kindness — your  scorn  for  un- 


47C  THACKERAY 

truth,  pretension,  imposture — your  tenderness  for  the  weak, 
the  poor,  the  oppressed,  the  unhappy.  ...  He  takes 
upon  him  to  be  the  week-day  preacher,  so  to  speak."  Late 
in  life  he  makes  his  "  faithful  old  gold  pen  "  say : 

"  Stranger,  I  never  writ  a  flattery, 
Nor  signed  the  page  that  registered  a  lie." 

And  again  he  writes  as  an  editor  to  his  readers :  ' '  Dearly  be- 
loved, neither  in  nor  out  of  this  pulpit  do  I  profess  to  be 
bigger  or  cleverer  or  wiser  than  any  of  you. ' ' 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Many  persons  will  call  this  description  low ;  I  do  not  envy 
them  their  gentility,  and  have  always  observed  through  life  (as  to 
be  sure  every  other  gentleman  has  observed  as  well  as  myself) 
that  it  is  your  parvenu  who  stickles  most  for  what  he  calls  the 
genteel,  and  has  the  most  squeamish  abhorrence  for  what  is  frank 
and  natural." —  The  Newcomes. 

"There  is  scarce  any  parent,  however  friendly  or  tender  with 
his  children,  but  must  feel  sometimes  that  they  have  thoughts 
which  are  not  his  or  hers,  and  wishes  and  secrets  quite  beyond 
the  parental  control ;  and  as  people  are  vain  long  after  they 
are  fathers,  ay,  or  grandfathers,  and  not  seldom  fancy  that  mere 
personal  desire  of  domination  is  overweening  anxiety  and  love  for 
their  family,  no  doubt  that  common  outcry  against  thankless  chil- 
dren might  often  be  shown  to  prove,  not  that  the  son  is  disobe- 
dient, but  the  father  too  exacting." — The  Newcomes. 

"There  was  a  crowd  of  idlers  round  the  door  as  I  passed  out 
of  it,  and  had  I  been  alone  I  should  have  been  ashamed  of  seeing 
them ;  but  as  it  was,  I  was  only  thinking  of  my  dear,  dear  wife, 
who  was  leaning  trustfully  on  my  arm  and  smiling  like  heaven 
into  my  face — ay,  and  took  heaven  too  into  the  Fleet  Prison 
with  me — or  an  angel  out  of  heaven.  Ah  !  I  had  loved  her  before, 
and  happy  it  is  to  love  when  one  is  hopeful  and  young  in  the 
midst  of  smiles  and  sunshine  ;  but  be  «//happy,  and  then  see  what 
it  is  to  be  loved  by  a  good  woman.  I  declare  before  heaven  that 
of  all  the  joys  and  happy  moments  it  has  given  me,  that  was  the 
crowning  one — that  little  ride  with  my  wife's  cheek  on  my  shoul- 


THACKERAY  477 

der  down  Holborn  to  the  prison." — The  Great  Hoggarty  Dia- 
mond. 


6.    Intense    Realism  —  Minute     Observation.  — 

Thackeray  was  fond  of  saying,  "  I  have  no  brain  above  the 
eyes;  I  describe  what  I  see."  We  have  already  considered 
one  phase  of  this  quality — that  which  concerns  his  portrayal 
of  personal  character.  We  now  come  to  his  minute  observa- 
tion of  things. 

"  Thackeray  looked  at  everything — at  nature,  at  life,  at  art 
— from  a  sensitive  aspect.  .  .  .  The  visible  scene  of 
life — the  streets,  the  servants,  the  clubs,  the  gossip,  the  West 
End — fastened  on  his  brain.  These  were  to  him  reality  ; 
they  burned  in  upon  his  brain  ;  they  pained  his  nerves ;  their 
influence  reached  him  through  many  avenues  which  ordinary 
men  do  not  feel  much  or  to  which  they  are  altogether  imper- 
vious. .  .  .  He  could  not  help  seeing  everything,  and 
what  he  saw  made  so  near  and  keen  an  impression  upon  him 
that  he  could  not  again  exclude  it  from  his  understanding;  it 
stayed  there  and  disturbed  his  thoughts." — Walter  Bagehot. 

"  His  scenes  never  seem  to  be  invented.     They  come  to 
pass.     The  author  lifts  the  curtain,  and   the  play  goes  on. 
.     .     Everybody,  on  reading  his  works,  is  quite  convinced 
that  the  author  has  seen  what  he  sets  forth.  .     .      '  He 

simply  puts  down  the  reports  of  his  eyes,'  says  Mr.  Keen,  '  as 
any  well-informed  gentleman  might  do.'  But  then,  my  friend, 
what  eyes  they  are  !  How  they  take  in  every  minute  particu- 
lar of  the  visible  appearance  ;  and  having  got  that,  have 
strangely  pierced  the  entire  significance  of  it ! 
There  is  something  so  sharp,  so  penetrating,  so  luminous  in 
his  look,  that  when  he  sees  the  thing  he  sees  the  whole  of  it 
— inside  as  well  as  out — and  that  not  only  with  his  eyes  but 
with  his  brain  and  heart." — Parke  Godwin. 

"  The  realism  of  Thackeray  represents  the  extreme  point  of 
reaction  against  the  false  idealism  of  the  Minerva  press.  .  .  . 


4/8  THACKERAY 

He  is  as  little  of  an  idealizer  as  it  is  possible  to  be.  ...  He 
depends  for  success,  not  on  the  power  of  his  personages  to  evoke 
sympathy,  negative  or  positive,  but  on  their  strict  correspond- 
ence with  fact.  .  .  .  His  popularity  is  the  most  powerful 
evidence  to  which  we  could  easily  point  of  the  capacity  re- 
siding in  the  exhibition  of  bare,  or  even  repulsive,  fact  to  in- 
terest mankind.  .  .  .  [He  gives]  the  uncompromising 
recital  of  nature's  facts." — Peter  Bayne. 

"Truthfulness  to  fact,  eager  and  uncompromising,  was  his 
main  characteristic.  .  .  .  He  strove  always  to  paint  and 
show  things  as  they  really  are." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

"  '  Vanity  Fair  '  is  a  moving  panorama  of  life,  with  a  hun- 
dred side-scenes  and  episodes  of  interest  and  with  a  reality 
and  fulness  of  humanity  which  have  never  been  surpassed." 
— Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  As  a  work  of  art  '  Esmond  '  is  Thackeray's  masterpiece ; 
as  the  reproduction  of  a  past  age — as  a  historical  novel — it  is 
unrivalled.  .  .  .  The  way  in  which  Thackeray  enters 
into  the  spirit  as  well  as  the  letter  of  the  times  he  describes  is 
wonderful."— J?.  H.  Stoddard. 

"Thackeray  takes  us  below  the  surface;  we  travel  through 
the  dark  scenes  of  the  human  drama  with  him  ;  he  makes  his 
notes  and  comments  without  flattery  and  with  astounding 
realism.  .  .  .  He  is  true  to  the  results  of  life  as  we  see 
them  daily.  For  example,  he  makes  Newcome  die  before  the 
family  fortunes  are  restored.  See,  again,  the  fate  of  Beatrix 
Esmond.  We  are  sorry,  but  it  is  natural.  .  .  .  There 
are  but  few  occurrences  in  the  whole  series  [of  his  works]  that 
were  not  drawn  either  from  his  own  individual  history  or  the 
history  of  some  one  of  his  friends  or  acquaintances. 
He  is  Fielding  purified."— £.  B.  Smith. 

"  When  Thackeray  began  to  be  known  as  a  writer  there  was 
a  small  but  select  circle  of  intelligent  readers  who  longed  for 
something  more  truthful  in  fiction.  .  .  .  They  wanted  a 
stern  painter  of  nature  to  arise  who  should  not  aim  at  touching 


THACKERAY  479 

their  sensibilities  by  the  tricks  and  slights  of  authorship  but 
who,  seeing  Nature  and  knowing  Her  intimately,  should  resolve 
to  interest  men  in  an  exact  and  complete  portrayal  of  separate 
human  characters  such  as  constitute  this  society  in  which 
we  pass  our  days,  loving  and  hating,  sinning  and  repenting. 
They  exclaimed,  '  Let  us  have  less  art  and  more 
truth  !  '  To  satisfy  this  craving  was  Thackeray's  appointed 
work.  From  first  to  last  simplicity  and  accuracy,  without 
reserve,  have  been  his  characteristics  as  an  author. 
It  was  Thackeray's  mission  to  renew  the  realistic  spirit  of 
Fielding."—/!  C.  Jeaffreson. 

"  How  thoroughly  he  understands  the  feelings  of  them  that 
go  down  into  the  West  in  broughams  !  Men  weary 

of  the  cupboard  drama,  the  tea-cup  tragedies  and  check-book 
and  band-box  comedies  which  he  regards  as  the  stuff  of  human 
action  and  the  web  of  human  life.  His  intelligence  is  largely 
one  of  trifles.  He  is  wise  over  trivial  and  trumpery  things." 
—  W.E.  Henley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  How  changed  the  house  is,  though  !  The  front  is  patched 
over  with  bills,  setting  forth  the  particulars  of  the  furniture  in 
staring  capitals.  They  have  hung  a  shred  of  carpet  out  of  an 
upstairs  window — a  half-dozen  porters  are  lounging  on  the  dirty 
steps — the  hall  swarms  with  dingy  guests  of  oriental  countenance, 
who  thrust  printed  cards  into  your  hand  and  offer  to  bid.  Old 
women  and  amateurs  have  invaded  the  upper  apartments, 
pinching  the  bed-curtains,  poking  into  the  feathers,  shampoo- 
ing the  mattresses,  and  clapping  the  wardrobe  drawers  to  and 
fro.  Enterprising  young  housekeepers  are  measuring  the  look- 
ing-glasses and  hangings  to  see  if  they  will  suit  the  new  menage 
— (Snob  will  brag  for  years  that  he  has  purchased  this  or  that  at 
Dives's  sale),  and  Mr.  Hammerdown  is  sitting  on  the  great 
mahogany  dining-table,  in  the  dining-room  below,  waving  the 
ivory  hammer  and  employing  all  the  artifices  of  eloquence,  en- 
thusiasm, entreaty,  reason,  despair  ;  shouting  to  his  people ; 
satirizing  Mr.  Davids  for  his  sluggishness  ;  inspiring  Mrs.  Moss 


480  THACKERAY 

into  action  ;  imploring,  commanding,  bellowing,  until  down 
comes  the  hammer  like  fate,  and  we  pass  to  the  next  lot." — Van- 
ity Fair. 

"  We  chat  with  our  pretty  neighbor  or  survey  the  young  ones 
sporting  ;  we  make  love  and  are  jealous ;  we  dance  or  obse- 
quiously turn  over  the  leaves  of  Cecilia's  music-book  ;  we  play 
whist  or  go  to  sleep  in  the  arm-chair,  according  to  our  ages  and 
conditions.  Snooze  gently  in  thy  arm-chair,  thou  bald-head  ! 
play  your  whist  or  read  your  novel  or  talk  scandal  over  your 
work,  ye  worthy  dowagers  and  fogies!  Meanwhile  the  young 
ones  frisk  about  or  dance  or  sing,  or  laugh ;  or  whisper  behind 
curtains  in  moonlit  windows  ;  or  slink  away  into  the  garden,  and 
come  back  smelling  of  cigars,  nature  having  made  them  to  do 
so." — The  Newcomes. 

"  On  entering  the  dining-room,  by  the  orders  of  the  individual 
in  gaiters,  Rebecca  found  that  apartment  not  more  cheerful  than 
such  rooms  usually  are,  when  genteel  families  are  out  of  town. 
The  faithful  chambers  seem,  as  it  were,  to  mourn  the  absence  of 
their  masters.  The  turkey  carpet  has  rolled  itself  up  and  retired 
sulkily  under  the  sideboard  ;  the  pictures  have  hidden  their  faces 
behind  old  sheets  of  brown  paper  ;  the  ceiling  lamp  is  muffled 
up  in  a  dismal  sack  of  brown  holland  ;  the  window  curtains  have 
disappeared  under  all  sorts  of  shabby  envelopes  ;  the  marble 
bust  of  Sir  Walpole  Crawley  is  looking  from  its  black  corner  at 
the  bare  boards  and  the  oiled  fire-irons  and  the  empty  card- 
racks  over  the  mantel-piece  ;  the  cellaret  has  lurked  away  behind 
the  carpet  ;  the  chairs  are  turned  up  heads  and  tails  along  the 
walls;  and  in  the  dark  corner  opposite  the  statue  is  an  old- 
fashioned  crabbed  knife-box,  locked  and  sitting  on  a  dumb- 
waiter."—  Vanity  Fair. 

7.  Didacticism  —  Fondness   for    Moralizing. — "I 

open  at  random  his  three  great  works — '  Pendennis,'  '  Van- 
ity Fair,'  'The  Newcomes. '  Every  scene  sets  in  relief  a 
moral  truth  ;  the  author  desires  that  at  every  stage  we  should 
form  a  judgment  on  vice  and  virtue  ;  he  has  blamed  or  ap- 
proved beforehand,  and  the  dialogues  or  portraits  are  to  him 
only  means  by  which  he  adds  our  approbation  to  his  appro- 
bation, our  blame  to  his  blame.  He  is  giving  us  lessons  ; 


THACKERAY  481 

and  beneath  the  sentiments  which  he  describes,  as  beneath 
the  events  which  he  relates,  we  continually  discover  rules  for 
the  conduct  and  the  intentions  of  a  reformer." — Taitic. 

"  His  was  not  the  hortatory  method.     He  had  no  notion 

that  much  good  could  be  done  by  telling  people  to  be  good. 

Yet  he  did  not  altogether  neglect  positive  teaching. 

Many  passages  might  be  taken  from  his  works  which  inculcate 

the  beauty  of  goodness." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

"  Our  real  sense  of  right  is  never  led  astray,  our  feelings  of 
obedience  toward  the  laws  of  God  are  not  one  whit  dimin- 
ished after  we  have  penised  his  writings." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  Thackeray's  works  are  full  of  moral  instruction  of  a  kind, 
but  it  is  of  a  kind  which  scarcely  applies  except  to  the  higher 
orders.  .  .  .  His  numerous  asides  to  his  readers  are  full 
of  that  sad  wisdom  which  experience  brings." — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  Thackeray's  morality  is  that  of  a  highly  respectable  Brit- 
ish cynic." — W.  E.  Henley. 

Thackeray  was  himself  well  aware  of  this  quality  of  his 
work,  for  he  writes  :  "  Perhaps  of  all  novel-spinners  now  ex- 
tant the  present  writer  is  the  most  addicted  to  preaching. 
Does  he  not  stop  perpetually  in  this  story  and  begin  to  preach 
to  you?" 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Have  we  not  all  such  closets,  my  jolly  friend,  as  well  as  the 
noble  Marquis  of  Carabas  ?  At  night,  when  all  the  house  is 
asleep  but  you,  don't  you  get  up  and  peep  into  yours  ?  When 
you  in  your  turn  are  slumbering,  up  gets  Mrs.  Brown  from  your 
side,  steals  down  stairs  like  Amina  to  her  ghoul,  clicks  open  the 
secret  door,  and  looks  into  her  dark  depository.  Psha  !  who 
knows  anyone  save  himself  alone  ?  Who,  in  showing  his  house 
to  the  closest  and  dearest,  doesn't  keep  back  the  key  of  a  closet 
or  two  ?  " —  The  Neivcomes. 

"  The  wicked  are  wicked,  no  doubt,  and  they  go  astray  and 
they  fall,  and  they  come  by  their  deserts ;  but  who  can  tell  the 
mischief  which  the  very  virtuous  do  ?  " — The  Newcomes. 

"  If  the  best  men  do  not  draw  the  best  prizes  in  life,  we  know 


482  THACKERAY 

that  it  has  been  so  ordained  by  the  Ordainer  of  the  lottery  ;  we 
own,  and  see  daily,  how  the  false  and  worthless  live  and  prosper, 
while  the  good  are  called  away,  and  the  dear  and  young  perish 
untimely.  We  perceive  in  every  man's  life  maimed  happiness, 
the  frequent  falling,  the  bootless  endeavor ;  .  .  .  we  see 
flowers  of  good  blooming  in  foul  places,  as  in  the  most  lofty  and 
splendid  fortunes,  flaws  of  vice  and  meanness  and  stains  of  evil, 
and,  knowing  how  mean  the  best  of  us  is,  let  us  give  a  hand  of 
charity  to  Arthur  Pendennis,  with  all  his  faults  and  shortcom- 
ings, who  does  not  claim  to  be  a  hero  but  only  a  man  and  a 
brother." — Pendennis. 

8.  Kindly  Humor. — "  First  and  foremost  is  his  wonderful 
humor — a  quality  in  which  he  is  not  inferior  to  Swift,  Field- 
ing, Dickens,  or  any  other  among  the  illustrious  English 
humorists — and  which  in  some  form  or  other  steeps  and  satu- 
rates every  page  of  his  writings. " — Parke  Godwin. 

"  The  first  characteristic  which  strikes  the  reader  of  Thack- 
eray is  unquestionably  his  humor.  It  does  not  gleam  forth  as 
flashes  of  lightning,  rare  and  vivid,  but  is  more  like  the  ever- 
bubbling  fountain,  the  perennial  spring.  It  is  a  kind  of  per- 
meating force  throughout  all  his  works,  now  lashed  into  sarcasm 
and  now  dissolved  into  pathos.  .  .  .  He  is  one  of  the  best 
of  English  humorists  simply  because  his  nature  is  sensitive  at 
all  points.  .  .  .  His  eye  wanders  round  all ;  and  neither 
friend  nor  foe,  if  vulnerable,  can  keep  out  the  arrows  of  his 
wit.  .  .  .  The  pure  humorist  is  the  rarest  of  literary 
characters.  His  nature  is  not  content  with  detecting  foibles 
nor  his  pen  with  pointing  them  out  for  derision ;  his  purpose  is 
infinitely  higher  and  nobler.  The  humorist  must  have  emo- 
tions, nerves,  sensibilities,  and  that  nameless  sympathy  with 
human  nature  which  enables  him  to  change  places  at  will  with 
other  members  of  his  species.  Humor  does  not  produce  the 
sneer  of  Voltaire,  it  rather  smiles  through  the  tear  of  Mon- 
taigne. .  .  .  It  is  not  contempt,  its  essence  is  love ;  it 
issues  not  in  laughter  but  in  still  smiles,  which  lie  far  deeper. 


THACKERAY  483 

.  .  .  When  to  the  faculty  of  originating  ridicule  is  added 
the  power  of  concentrating  pity  or  pathos  upon  the  subject, 
this  may  be  styled  humor.  But  the  irony  must  be  subjugated 
to  the  feeling.  The  heart  must  love  while  the  countenance 
may  smile." — G.  B.  Smith. 

"  Mr.  Thackeray's  humor  does  not  mainly  consist  in  the 
creation  of  oddities  of  manner,  habit,  or  feeling,  but  in  so 
representing  actual  men  and  women  as  to  excite  a  feeling  of 
incongruity  in  the  reader's  mind — a  feeling  that  the  follies  and 
vices  described  are  deviations  from  an  ideal  of  humanity. 
.  .  .  No  one  could  be  simply  amused  with  Mr.  Thackeray's 
descriptions  or  his  dialogues.  .  .  .  The  moral  antithesis 
of  the  actual  and  the  ideal  is  the  root  from  which  springs  the 
peculiar  charm  of  his  writings.  .  .  .  He  could  not  have 
painted  'Vanity  Fair'  as  he  has  unless  Eden  had  been  shining 
brightly  in  his  inner  eyes." — G.  Brimley. 

"  He  ridiculed  the  ugly  and  the  absurd  in  truth  and  pure- 
ness.  .  .  .  Even  when  the  necessities  of  his  story  compel 
him  to  draw  bad  characters,  he  gives  them  as  much  good  as 
he  can.  ...  If  reproof  is  the  main  burden  of  his  dis- 
course, we  must  remember  that  to  reprove,  not  to  praise,  is  the 
business  of  the  preacher." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

"  With  the  doubtful  characters — those  which  hover  on  the 
boundaries  of  good  and  bad — how  admirably  Thackeray  can 
turn  their  good  qualities  toward  us  !  .  .  .  For  all  those 
whom  moralists  would  sweep  aside  as  worthless  Thackeray  had 
the  truly  catholic  sympathy  of  a  man  who  has  seen  enough  to 
find  good  in  everything.  .  .  .  Taken  merely  as  a  piece 
of  humorous  writing,  the  '  Book  of  Snobs '  approaches  the 
sublime." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

J.  C.  Watt  speaks  finely  of  "the  abundant  and  abiding 
pleasantness  of  Thackeray's  wit."  That  he  felt  the  injustice 
of  those  who  regarded  him  as  a  mere  cynic  or  satirist,  ap- 
pears from  a  letter  which  Thackeray  wrote  to  Edinburgh 
friends  in  1848.  He  there  describes  himself  as  "a  writer  who 


484  THACKERAY 

has  had  some  difficulty  in  making  people  understand 
that  under  the  mask  satirical  there  walks  about  a  sentimental 
person  who  means. not  unkindly  to  any  mortal."     And,  in 
discussing  abstractly  the  quality  of  humor,   he  says:    "The 
first  quality  of  an  artist  is  to  have  a  large  heart. 
Tears  are  the  alms  of  gentle  spirits.     ...     I  know  of  no 
such  provocative  as  humour;  it  is  an  irresistible  sympathizer; 
it  surprises  you  into  compassion.     .     .     .     Humour  is  mis- 
tress of  tears. ' ' 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When  she  had  to  stretch  across  the  table  to  make  a  stroke, 
that  youth  caught  glimpses  of  a  little  ankle,  a  little  clocked  stock- 
ing, and  a  little  black  satin  slipper  with  a  little  red  heel,  which 
filled  him  with  unutterable  rapture,  and  made  him  swear  that 
there  never  was  such  a  foot,  ankle,  clocked  stocking,  satin  slip- 
pers in  the  world.  And  yet,  O  you  foolish  Harry !  your  mother's 
foot  was  ever  so  much  more  slender,  and  half  an  inch  shorter, 
than  Lady  Maria's.  But  somehow  boys  do  not  look  at  their 
mamma's  slippers  and  ankles  with  rapture." — The  Virginians. 

"  Andrea  was  here  then  in  the  loneliness  that  he  loved, — a 
fantastic  youth,  who  lived  but  for  his  art  ;  to  whom  the  world 
was  like  the  Coburg  Theatre,  and  he  in  a  magnificent  costume 
acting  a  principal  part.  His  art  and  his  beard  and  whiskers 
were  the  darlings  of  his  heart.  His  long,  pale  hair  fell  over  a 
high  polished  brow,  which  looked  wonderfully  thoughtful ;  and 
yet  no  man  was  more  guiltless  of  thinking.  He  was  always  put- 
ting himself  into  attitudes  ;  he  never  spoke  the  truth  ;  and  was 
so  entirely  affected  and  absurd  as  to  be  quite  honest  at  last ;  for 
it  is  my  belief  that  the  man  did  not  know  truth  from  falsehood 
any  longer,  and  was  when  alone,  when  in  company,  nay,  when 
unconscious  and  sound  asleep  snoring  in  bed,  one  complete  lump 
of  affectation.  .  .  .  To  do  him  justice,  he  hated  '  Don  Juan,' 
and  a  woman  was  in  his  eyes  an  angel  ;  a  Mangel,  alas  !  he  would 
call  her,  for  nature  and  the  circumstances  of  his  family  had 
taken  sad  Cockney  advantages  over  Andrea's  pronunciation." 
— A  Shabby  Genteel  Story. 

"  Dr.  Firmin's  horror  seemed  to  be  because  his  noble  friends 


THACKERAY  485 

were  horrified  by  Phil's  radical  doctrine.  At  that  time  of  my 
life,  being  young  and  very  green,  I  had  a  little  mischievous 
pleasure  in  infuriating  Square-toes  and  causing  him  to  pronounce 
that  I  was  '  a  dangerous  man.'  Now  I  am  ready  to  say  that  Nero 
was  a  monarch  with  many  elegant  accomplishments  and  consider- 
able natural  amiability  of  disposition.  I  praise  and  admire  suc- 
cess wherever  I  meet  it.  I  make  allowances  for  faults  and  short- 
comings, especially  in  my  superiors  ;  and  feel  that,  did  we  know 
all,  we  should  judge  them  very  differently.  People  don't  believe 
me,  perhaps,  quite  so  much  as  formerly  ;  but  I  don't  offend — 
I  trust  I  don't  offend.  Have  I  said  anything  painful  ?  Plague 
on  my  blunders !  I  recall  the  expression.  I  regret  it.  I  con- 
tradict it  flat."— Adventures  of  Philip. 

9.  Simple  Pathos — Tenderness. — This  is  a  quality 
closely  verging  on  Thackeray's  sympathy  and  his  humor, 
already  considered.  He  once  told  Dickens  that  he  "never 
could  see  a  boy  without  wanting  instantly  to  give  him  a 
sovereign."  Anthony  Trollope  says:  "  I  regard  him  as  one 
of  the  most  tender-hearted  human  beings  I  ever  knew ;  one 
who,  with  an  exaggerated  contempt  for  the  foibles  of  the 
world  at  large,  would  entertain  an  almost  equal  sympathy 
with  the  joys  and  troubles  of  those  around  him.  .  .  . 
Nothing  sadder  than  the  story  of  Beatrix  can  be  imagined." 

"  '  Esmond  '  gives  instructive  exhibitions  of  the  pathology 
of  the  heart — the  pathos  of  secret  home  sorrow." — R.  A. 
Vaughan. 

"  There  was  always  the  sad  vein  in  whatever  came  from  his 
pen.  Nothing  was  without  its  vanity  any  more  than  without 
its  comic  element  or  urbanity."—/.  C.  Watt. 

"  A  knowledge  that  his  sorrows  were  great  is  necessary  to 
the  perfect  appreciation  of  much  of  his  deepest  pathos." — H. 
H.  Lancaster. 

"  There  was  to  the  last  in  him  the  sensibility  of  a  child's 
genuine  heart.  .  .  .  He  did  in  his  writings  what  thou- 
sands of  men  do  in  their  lives — shrouded  an  over-tenderness 


486  THACKERAY 

in  a  transparent  veil  of  cynicism.  .  .  .  The  eye  was  a 
dull  one  that  could  not  look  through  this  muslin  work  into  a 
mind  that,  so  to  speak,  was  always  keeping  Christmas. " — H. 
T.  Tuckerman. 

Some  of  the  best  comments  on  Thackeray's  pathos  are  from 
the  pens  of  anonymous  contributors  to  the  reviews.  We  ap- 
pend one : 

"  The  pathos  of  Thackeray  is  not  sentimentality  carefully 
elaborated,  nor  is  it  an  outgushing  of  emotion  that  moves  us 
to  tears  and  as  quickly  restores  our  smiles.  It  comes,  like 
many  scenes  in  life,  unexpectedly  before  our  eyes,  and  moves 
us  to  the  heart  with  mute  appeal.  This  pathos  is  saddening 
rather  than  affecting.  It  comes  from  a  tender  heart  bleeding 
with  sorrow  for  others  in  distress  and  gloom.  It  is  the  grief 
which  comes  when  the  most  precious  objects  of  love  are  taken 
away,  and  when  there  seems  to  be  no  comfort,  no  hope,  no 
consolation.  While  it  leaves  the  eye  unmoistened,  it  too 
often  makes  the  heart  sad  to  the  core  and  leaves  it  so.  ... 
Thackeray's  sentiment,  rarely  indulged  in,  is  never  otherwise 
than  genuine;  his  pathos  goes  to  the  roots  of  the  heart." — 
Westminster  Review. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Half  an  hour  after  the  father  left  the  boy,  and  in  his  grief 
and  loneliness  was  rowing  back  to  shore,  Clive  was  at  play  with  a 
dozen  other  children  on  the  sunny  deck  of  the  ship.  .  .  . 
What  a  sad  repast  their  parents  had  that  day  !  How  their  hearts 
followed  the  careless  young  ones  home  across  the  great  ocean  ! 
Mothers'  prayers  go  with  them.  Strong  men,  alone  on  their 
knees,  with  streaming  eyes  and  broken  accents,  implore  Heaven 
for  those  little  ones  who  were  prattling  at  their  sides  but  a  few 
hours  since.  Long  after  they  are  gone,  careless  and  happy,  rec- 
ollections of  the  sweet  past  rise  up  and  smite  those  who  remain  : 
the  flowers  they  had  planted  in  their  little  gardens,  the  toys  they 
played  with,  the  little  vacant  cribs  they  slept  in  as  father's  eyes 
looked  blessings  down  upon  them." —  The  Newcomes. 


THACKERAY  487 

"It  is  only  in  later  days,  perhaps,  when  the  treasures  of  love 
are  spent  and  the  kind  hand  cold  which  ministered  them,  that  we 
remember  how  tender  it  was  ;  how  soft  to  soothe  ;  how  eager  to 
shield  ;  how  ready  to  support  and  caress.  The  ears  may  no 
longer  hear  which  would  have  received  our  words  of  thanks  so 
delightedly.  Let  us  hope  those  fruits  of  love,  though  tardy,  are 
yet  not  all  too  late." — The  Newcomes. 

11  Esmond  came  to  this  spot  in  one  sunny  evening  of  spring, 
and  saw  amidst  a  thousand  black  crosses,  casting  their  shadows 
across  the  grassy  mounds,  that  particular  one  which  marked  his 
mother's  resting-place.  .  .  .  He  fancied  her,  in  tears  and 
darkness,  kneeling  at  the  foot  of  her  cross,  under  which  her  cares 
were  buried.  Surely,  he  knelt  down  and  said  his  own  prayer 
there,  not  in  sorrow  as  much  as  in  awe  (for  even  his  memory  had 
no  recollections  of  her)  and  in  pity  for  the  pangs  which  the  gentle 
soul  in  life  had  been  made  to  suffer.  .  .  .  Might  she  sleep 
in  peace — might  she  sleep  in  peace  ;  and  we  too  when  our  strug- 
gles and  pains  are  over.  ...  I  took  a  little  flower  off  the 
hillock  and  kissed  it,  and  went  my  way  like  the  bird  that  had 
just  lighted  on  the  cross  by  me,  back  into  the  world  again." — 
Henry  Esmond. 


10.  Skill  in  Burlesque  and  Farce. — "  In  parody  of 
every  kind,  from  the  most  admiring  imitation  down  to  the 
most  boisterous  burlesque,  Thackeray  stands  at  the  head  of  all 
other  imitators.  .  .  .  '  Codlingsby,'  the  parody  of  Dis- 
raeli's '  Coningsby,'  may  be  taken  as  the  most  effective  par- 
ody in  our  language.  .  .  .  Those  ten  pages  of  irrepressi- 
ble fooling  are  enough  to  destroy  Disraeli's  reputation  as  a 
serious  romancer.  .  .  .  It  is  only  the  very  greatest  mas- 
ters who  can  produce  extravaganzas,  puerile  tomfooleries, 
drolleries  to  delight  children,  and  catchpenny  songs  of  such  a 
kind  that  mature  and  cultivated  students  can  laugh  over  them 
for  the  fiftieth  time  and  read  them  till  they  are  household 
words." — Frederic  Harrison. 

"  In  the  burlesque,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  or  the  ludi- 
crous, Thackeray  is  quite  as  much  at  home  as  in  the  realistic 


488  THACKERAY 

division  of  pure  fiction  ;  though,  the  vehicle  being  less  power- 
ful, he  has  achieved  smaller  results  by  it.  ...  No  writer 
ever  had  a  stronger  proclivity  toward  parody  than  Thack- 
eray. ' '  — A  nthony  Trollope. 

"  In  the  riot  of  his  burlesques  .  .  .  he  is  not  seen  at 
his  best ;  but  his  second-rate  is  much  better  than  the  first- 
rate  of  any  one  else  in  the  same  way." — W.  D.  Howells. 

"The  love  of  fun  in  him  was  something  quite  peculiar. 
Some  writers  have  been  more  witty ;  a  few  have  had  more 
delicate  humor  ;  but  none,  we  think,  have  had  more  of  that 
genial  quality  which  is  described  by  that  homely  word  fun." 
— H.  H.  Lancaster. 

"  Thackeray  has  distinctively  exhibited  the  trivial  aspect  of 
life.  .  .  .  The  characters  he  draws  are  neither  the  best 
men  nor  the  worst,  but  the  atmosphere  of  triviality  which 
envelops  them  was  never  before  so  plainly  perceivable.  He 
paints  the  world  as  a  great  Vanity  Fair,  and  none  has  done 
that  so  well." — Peter  Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  wonder  did  she  hear  the  bump-bumping  of  my  heart  ?  O 
heart ! — O  wounded  heart !  did  I  ever  think  thou  wouldst  bump- 
bump  again?  '  Egl — Egl — izabeth,'  I  say,  choking  with  emotion, 
'  do — do — do — you — te — tell  me — you  don't — lo — love  that  apoth- 
ecary ? ' 

"  She  shrugs  her  shoulder — her  charming  shoulder. 

"  '  And  if,'  I  hotly  continued, '  if  a  gentleman — if  a  man  of  ma- 
ture age  certainly,  but  who  has  a  kind  heart  and  four  hundred  a 
year  of  his  own — were  to  say  to  you,  '  Elizabeth  !  will  you  bid  the 
flowers  of  a  blighted  life  to  bloom  again  ?  Elizabeth,  will  you 
soothe  a  wounded  heart — ?  ' 

"'O,  Mr.  Batchelor!'  she  sighed,  and  then  added,  quickly, 
'  Please  don't  take  my  hand  !  Here's  Pop  ! '"  —  Lovel  the 
Widower. 

"  Away  through  light  and  darkness,  storm  and  sunshine  ;  away 
by  tower  and  town,  highroad  and  hamlet.  .  .  .  Brave  horse  ! 


THACKERAY  489 

gallant  steed  !  snorting  child  of  Araby !  On  went  the  horse, 
over  mountains,  rivers,  turnpikes,  apple-women  ;  and  never 
stopped  until  he  reached  a  livery  stable  in  Cologne,  where  his 
master  was  accustomed  to  put  him  up." — Rebecca  and  Rowena. 

"  I  have  seen,  I  say,  the  Hereditary  Princess  of  Potztausend- 
Donnerwetter  (that  serenely  beautiful  woman)  use  her  knife  in  lieu 
of  a  fork  or  spoon  ;  I  have  seen  her  almost  swallow  it,  by  Jove  !  like 
Ramo  Samee,  the  Indian  juggler.  And  did  I  blench  ?  Did  my 
estimation  for  the  princess  diminish  ?  No,  lovely  Amelia !  One 
of  the  truest  passions  that  ever  was  inspired  by  woman  was  raised 
in  this  bosom  by  that  lady.  Beautiful  one !  long,  long  may  the 
knife  carry  food  to  those  lips  !  the  reddest  and  loveliest  in  the 
world."—  The  Snob  Playfully  Dealt  With. 

II.  Significant  Appellations. — The  fondness  of 
Thackeray  for  caricaturing  people  by  single  appellations  is 
rather  a  phase  of  the  quality  last  considered  than  a  new  qual- 
ity. But  the  feature  is  sufficiently  prominent  to  warrant  spe- 
cific treatment.  In  speaking  of  "  Jeames's  Diary,"  Jeaffre- 
son  says :  "  Nothing  could  be  more  laughter-moving  than  the 
mere  orthography  of  these  wondrous  autobiographical  mem- 
oranda of  the  great  archetype  and  representative  man  of 
Flunkeydom." 

"  Many  of  the  remote  personages  and  minor  characters 
whom  other  writers  would  refer  to  in  general  terms  Thack- 
eray introduces  to  us  by  name,  and  we  know  them  by  the  ear- 
mark he  has  pointed  out.  Do  we  not  know  who  Doctor 
Straightwaist  is,  although  he  never  appeared  on  the  stage  or 
spoke  a  word?  Was  contempt  for  the  asinine  M.  P.  ever 
better  expressed  than  by  calling  him  Lord  Longears  and  ask- 
ing after  the  health  of  his  sons,  Fitz-Heehaw  and  the  De 
Brays  ?  Or  how  could  impoverished  and  snobbish  nobility 
be  more  pungently  satirized  than  by  introducing  Sir  Pitt 
Crawley,  residing  on  Great  Gaunt  Street  in  Crawleycum, 
Snailby  parish  ?  This  is  caricature  in  a  word  and  with  a 
single  stroke  of  the  pen,  but  its  images  we  carry  in  our  mem- 
ory long  after  more  elaborate  portraits  have  faded.  Other  ex- 


490  THACKERAY 

amples  .  .  .  are  Grimby,  the  tomfool  jester ;  Bawler,  of 
the  House  of  Commons  ;  Sir  Huddleston  Fuddleston,  the 
lord;  Jawkins,  the.  club  gossip  ;  Drencher,  the  doctor;  Cap- 
tain Blacksheep,  the  inebriate ;  Miss  Prior,  the  ancient 
maiden ;  Yellowplush,  the  footman ;  Cuff,  the  boarding- 
school  bully;  Hammerdown,  the  auctioneer,  who  does  his 
best  to  inspire  Mrs.  Moss  to  a  purchase ;  Lords  Castlemouldy 
and  Bareacres  of  the  poverty-stricken  nobility ;  Colonel 
Swallowtail,  the  military  dandy  in- the  box  at  the  play." — 
Frank  McElwain. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  '  General  Gulpin,'  continued  Rosa,  '  eats  a  great  deal  and  is 
very  stupid,  but  he  looks  well  at  table  with  his  star  and  ribbon. 
Let  us  put  him  down  ! '  and  she  noted  down  '  Sir  Thomas  and 
Lady  Gulpin  2,  Lord  Castlemouldy,  i.'  .  .  .  Mrs.  Fitzroy 
insisted  that  the  party  should  be  of  her  very  best  company. 
Funnyman,  the  great  wit,  was  asked  because  of  his  jokes  and 
Mrs.  Butt,  on  whom  he  practices." — A  Little  Dinner  at  Tim- 
mins's. 

"  Herewith  slang  takes  the  lead  of  the  conversation,  and  I 
could  not  help  remarking  how  like  the  comedy  was  to  life ;  .  .  . 
how  Lady  Grace  Gadabout,  when  she  calls  upon  Rose  Ringdove 
to  pay  a  morning  visit,  appears  in  a  low  satin  dress,  with  jewels 
in  her  hair ;  how  Saucebox,  her  attendant,  wears  diamond 
brooches  and  rings  on  all  her  ringers  :  while  Mrs.  Tallyho,  on 
the  other  hand,  transacts  all  the  business  of  life  in  a  riding-habit, 
and  always  points  her  jokes  by  a  cut  of  the  whip." — Sketches  and 
Travels  in  London. 

"  She  listened  with  indefatigable  complacency  to  his  stories  of 
the  stable  and  the  mess  ;  felt  the  greatest  interest  in  Jack  Spat- 
terdash,  whose  cab-horse  had  come  down,  and  Bob  Martingale, 
who  had  been  taken  up  in  a  gambling-house,  and  Tom  Cinq- 
bars,  who  was  going  to  ride  the  steeplechase." — Vanity  Fair. 

12.  Alleged  Injustice  to  Womanhood. — Thack- 
eray has  been  frequently  and  severely  criticised  for  presenting 
a  low  and  unfair  ideal  of  womanhood  ;  and  the  charge,  while 


THACKERAY  49! 

not  very  strikingly  sustained,  is  admitted  by  some  critics  who 
are  otherwise  most  favorable  in  their  comments.  Senior  calls 
"  Vanity  Fair  "  "  a  rich  collection  of  deformities,"  and  pro- 
ceeds :  "  Having  with  great  skill  put  together  a  creature  of 
which  the  principal  elements  are  undiscriminating  affection, 
ill-requited  devotion,  ignorant  partiality,  a  weak  will,  and  a 
narrow  intellect,  he  calls  on  us  to  worship  his  poor  idol  as 
the  type  of  female  excellence."  On  the  other  hand,  those 
who  say  Thackeray  is  unjust  to  women  should  read  "  Mr. 
Brown's  Letters  to  His  Nephew,"  which  Lancaster  calls 
"  next  to  the  '  Snob  Papers  '  and  Sydney  Smith's  Lectures, 
the  best  modern  work  on  moral  philosophy."  In  the  same 
vein  Lowell  declares  :  "  We  have  yet  to  recall  a  single  word 
of  his  calculated  to  bring  a  really  womanly  woman  into  con- 
tempt. ' ' 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  No,  I  am  a  woman  scorner,  and  don't  care  to  own  it.  I  hate 
young  ladies !  Have  I  not  been  in  love  with  several,  and  has 
any  one  of  them  ever  treated  me  decently  ?  I  hate  married 
women !  Do  they  not  hate  me  ?  and,  simply  because  I  smoke, 
try  to  draw  their  husbands  away  from  my  society  ?  I  hate  dow- 
agers !  Have  I  not  cause  ?  Does  not  every  dowager  in  London 
point  to  George  Fitz-Boodle  as  to  a  dissolute  wretch  whom  young 
and  old  should  avoid  ?  " — Fitz-Boodle's  Confessions. 

"  O  me  !  what  a  confession  it  is,  in  the  very  outset  of  life  and 
blushing  brightness  of  youth's  morning,  to  own  that  the  aim  with 
which  a  young  girl  sets  out,  and  the  object  of  her  existence,  is  to 
marry  a  rich  man ;  that  she  was  endowed  with  beauty  so  that 
she  might  buy  wealth,  and  a  title  with  it ;  that  as  sure  as  she  has 
a  soul  to  save  her  business  here  on  earth  is  to  try  and  get  a  rich 
husband." — The  Neivcomes. 

11  Add  tears,  scorn,  frequent  innuendo,  long  estrangement,  bit- 
ter outbreak,  passionate  appeals  to  Heaven  and  the  like,  and  we 
may  fancy  the  widow's  state  of  mind.  Are  there  not  beloved 
beings  of  the  gentler  sex  who  argue  in  the  same  way  nowadays  ? 
The  book  of  female  logic  is  blotted  all  over  with  tears,  and  Jus- 
tice in  their  courts  is  forever  in  a  passion." — The  Virginians. 


NEWMAN,  1801-1890 

Biographical  Outline. — John  Henry  Newman,  born  in 
London,  February  21, 1801;  father  a  banker,  mother  of  Hugue- 
not descent;  in  1808  he  enters  a  private  school  at  Baling; 
shows  an  early  love  of  literature;  dates  his  "conversion" 
(of  which  he  afterward  wrote,  "  I  am  still  more  certain  of  it 
than  that  I  have  hands  or  feet")  in  the  autumn  of  1816  ;  as 
a  boy,  reads  widely  in  theology  and  church  history ;  enters 
Trinity  College,  Oxford,  December  14,  1816;  gains  a  valu- 
able Trinity  scholarship  in  1818;  father  suffers  financial  dis- 
aster in  1818,  and  Newman  enters  Lincoln's  Inn,  where  he 
keeps  a  few  terms,  his  father  intending  him  for  the  law ;  he 
breaks  down  (through  overreading)  in  his  final  University 
examination  in  1820,  and  barely  secures  his  B.A.  degree; 
remains  in  Oxford  as  a  private  tutor;  studies  Latin,  logic, 
and  physics  in  competition  for  a  fellowship  in  Oriel  College, 
which  he  wins,  April  12,  1822 — "the  turning  point  of  his 
life  ;  "  becomes  an  intimate  friend  of  Pusey,  then  also  a  fel- 
low of  Oriel ;  is  ordained  deacon,  June  13,  1824,  and  becomes 
curate  of  St.  Clement's  Church,  Oxford  ;  does  much  hard 
parish  work,  and  preaches  for  the  following  nineteen  years  as 
an  Anglican  clergyman ;  comes  closely  under  the  influence  of 
Whately,  then  principal  of  Alban  Hall,  who  makes  Newman 
vice-principal;  assists  in  composing  Whately 's  "Logic;" 
resigns  at  St.  Alban 's  and  becomes  a  tutor  in  Oriel  in  1826 ; 
contributes  to  the  "Encyclopaedia  Metropolitana  "  an  article 
on  Cicero  in  1824  and  an  essay  on  Miracles  in  1826  ;  in  1827 
he  is  appointed  one  of  the  preachers  at  Whitehall  Palace, 
London ;  becomes  vicar  of  St.  Mary's,  the  University  church, 

493 


NEWMAN  493 

Oxford,  in  1828  ;  serves  as  pro-proctor  in  1830,  and  begins  his 
break  with  the  evangelical  church  party  by  writing  a  pamphlet 
criticising  the  Church  Missionary  Society  at  Oxford;  begins  a 
systematic  study  of  the  church  fathers ;  is  made  one  of  the 
select  University  preachers  in  1831-32;  disagrees  with  the 
provost  over  the  duties  of  his  tutorship,  and  is  forced  to  resign 
in  1832 ;  visits  Italy  in  December,  1832,  and  meets  Dr. 
(after  Cardinal)  Wiseman  ;  finds  the  religion  of  Rome  at  that 
time  "polytheistic,  degrading,  and  idolatrous;"  while  in 
Rome,  collaborating  with  his  companion,  Hurrell  Froude,  he 
begins  the  poems  known  as  the  "Lyra  Apostolica ;  "  visits 
Sicily  in  April,  1833;  is  dangerously  ill,  but  repeatedly  ex- 
claims, "  I  shall  not  die,  I  have  a  work  to  do;"  in  June, 
1833,  while  becalmed  on  an  orange-boat  sailing  from  Palermo 
to  Marseilles,  Newman  writes  "Lead,  Kindly  Light;"  he 
reaches  London,  July  9,  1833,  five  days  before  Keble  starts 
"The  Oxford  Movement"  by  his  Oxford  assize  sermon  on 
national  apostasy ;  Newman  begins  his  "Tracts  for  the  Times" 
in  September,  1833,  and  advances  "  The  Oxford  Movement  " 
by  his  sermons  at  St.  Mary's;  publishes  his  volume  on  the 
Arians  at  the  close  of  1833  ;  publishes  "  The  Prophetical  Office 
of  the  Church  "  and  "  Justification  "  in  1837,  and  "  Disqui- 
sition on  the  Canon  "  and  the  "  Tractate  on  Antichrist"  in 
1838 ;  becomes  editor  of  the  British  Critic,  the  organ  of  the 
tractarian  movement;  publishes  "Tract  Ninety"  in  1841, 
which,  by  its  attitude  toward  Catholicism,  excites  great  in- 
dignation ;  Newman  consequently  resigns  his  editorship  of  the 
Critic  in  1841 ;  he  withdraws  from  Oxford  and  forms,  with 
several  disciples,  the  "  Littlemore  Monastery,"  where  he  re- 
mains three  years  in  suspense  ;  in  February,  1843,  he  publishes 
in  the  Consen'ati 've  Journal  a  retraction  of  his  charges  against 
the  Church  of  Rome,  and  in  September  resigns  his  living  at 
St.  Mary's  ;  he  formally  joins  the  Church  of  Rome,  October 
9,  1845  ;  leaves  Oxford  in  February,  1846,  soon  visits  Rome, 
and  is  there  ordained  priest  in  October ;  he  returns  to  Eng- 


494  NEWMAN 

land  in  1847,  and  resides  at  Birmingham  and  other  places;  in 
1849  he  publishes  his  "  Discourses  to  Mixed  Congregations  " 
— considered  his  greatest  sermons;  in  1850  he  establishes  the 
London  Oratory,  and  publishes  his  "Twelve  Lectures;  "in 
1851  he  publishes  his  "Lectures  on  the  Present  Position  of 
Catholics;"  makes  charges  against  an  apostate  Romish 
priest,  Dr.  Achelli ;  is  sued  for  libel  and  is  fined  ^100 
in  January,  1853;  in  1854  Newman  becomes  rector  of  the 
new  Catholic  University  then  just  established  at  Dublin  ;  he 
publishes  "The  Idea  of  a  University;  "  returns  to  Birming- 
ham in  1858,  the  Dublin  institution  having  proved  a  failure  ; 
in  1859  he  establishes  a  school  at  Edgbarton  for  Catholics 
of  the  upper  class ;  is  drawn  into  a  controversy  with  Charles 
Kingsley  in  1864,  which  leads  to  the  publication  of  Newman's 
"  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,"  which  revolutionized  popular 
opinion  in  his  favor ;  his  works  in  thirty-six  volumes  are  pub- 
lished in  1868;  in  1874,  replying  to  Gladstone's  "Vatican 
Decrees,"  he  publishes  his  "  Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk ;  " 
is  elected  an  honorary  member  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  in 
1877  ;  is  created  Cardinal  in  1879;  resided  at  Edgbarton  till 
his  death,  August  u,  1890. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY    ON    NEWMAN'S   STYLE. 

Hutton,  R.  H.,  "  Modern  Guides  to  Religious  Thought."  London,  1891, 

Macmillan,  47-101. 
Shairp,  J.  S.  C,  "Aspects  of  Poetry."    Boston,  1882,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&Co.,  377-401. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  "  Short  Studies."  New  York,  1884,  Scribner,  2  :  86-121. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."  New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  441-455. 
O'Hagan,   Lord,    "Occasional   Papers."      London,    1884,  Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co. ,  243-245. 
Martineau,  J.,    "Essays."     London,:  1866,    Longmans,  Green   &   Co., 

219-281. 
Oliphant,  Mrs.,  "  The  Victorian  Age  of  English  Literature."    New  York, 

1892,  Tait,  2  :   313-322. 
Scribner1  s  Magazine,  3:  735-743  (Birrell). 


NEWMAN  495 

The  Nation,  5 1 :    127-129. 

Contemporary   Review,   58:   313-332  (Meynell) ;    45:  642-665  (R.    H. 

Hutton). 

Andover  Review,  4 :  97-113  (F.  B.  Hornebrooke) ;    14:   262-298. 
Nineteenth  Century  Magazine,  28:   563-574  (Ward). 
Dublin  Review,  107:  424-436  (Hayman). 
The  Catholic  World,  51  :    712-724  (Hewit). 
London  Quarterly  Review,  75  :    205-232. 
American  Catholic  Quarterly,  15:  609-629  (A.  F.  Marshall). 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Finish — Urbanity. — "  The  finish  and  urbanity  of 
Cardinal  Newman's  prose  have  been  universally  commended, 
even  by  those  who  are  most  strenuously  opposed  to  his  opin- 
ions."— H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  How  tender  is  the  style  in  the  only  sense  in  which  we  can 
properly  attribute  tenderness  to  style,  its  avoidance  of  every 
harsh  word,  its  shrinking  aside  from  anything  like  overstate- 
ment."— R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Carlyle's  style  is  like  the  full  untutored  swing  of  the 
giant's  arm  ;  Cardinal  Newman's  is  the  assured  self-possession, 
the  quiet  gracefulness,  of  the  finished  athlete." — Principal 
Shairp. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Man  is  a  being  of  genius,  passion,  intellect,  conscience, 
power.  He  exercises  these  various  gifts  in  various  ways,  in  great 
deeds,  in  great  thoughts,  in  heroic  acts,  in  hateful  crimes.  He 
founds  states,  he  fights  battles,  he  builds  cities,  he  ploughs  the 
forests,  he  subdues  the  elements,  he  rules  his  kind.  He  creates 
vast  ideas,  and  influences  many  generations.  .  .  .  He  pours 
out  his  fervid  soul  in  poetry  ;  he  sways  to  and  fro,  he  soars,  he 
dives  in  his  restless  speculations  ;  his  lips  drop  eloquence ;  he 
touches  the  canvas,  and  it  glows  with  beauty  ;  he  sweeps  the 
strings,  and  they  thrill  with  an  ecstatic  meaning." — Literature 
and  Life. 

"  Where  are  they  who  were  so  active,  so  sanguine,  so  gener- 
ous ?  the  amiable,  the  modest,  and  the  kind  ?  We  were  told  that 
they  were  dead  ;  they  suddenly  disappeared  ;  that  is  all  we  know 


496  NEWMAN 

about  it.  They  were  silently  taken  from  us  ;  they  are  not  met  in 
the  seat  of  the  elders,  nor  in  the  assemblies  of  the  people  ;  in  the 
mixed  concourse  of  men,  nor  in  the  domestic  retirement  which 
they  prized.  As  Scripture  describes  it,  '  The  wind  has  passed 
over  them,  and  they  are  gone,  and  their  place  shall  know  them  no 
more.'  And  they  have  burst  the  many  ties  which  bound  them  ; 
they  were  parents,  brothers,  sisters,  children,  and  friends ;  but 
the  bond  of  kindred  is  broken,  and  the  silver  cord  of  love  is 
loosed." — The  Lapse  of  Time. 

"  Blessed  portion  indeed,  thus  to  be  tutored  in  the  sweetest, 
softest  strains  of  gospel  truth  and  to  range  over  the  face  of  the 
earth  pilgrims  and  sojourners,  with  winning  voices  singing,  as  far 
as  in  the  flesh  it  is  possible  to  sing,  the  song  of  Moses  the  ser- 
vant of  God  and  the  song  of  the  Lamb." — Affliction,  A  School  of 
Comfort. 

2.  Self-Revelation. — "  There  is  one  quality  which  will 
give  Newman's  sermons  perpetual  interest.  It  is  not  the  style, 
finished  as  that  is ;  it  is  not  the  thought,  deep  and  true,  as  all 
must  acknowledge  ;  but  it  is  the  fact  that  these  sermons  are 
the  revelation  of  his  inner  experience." — F.B.  Hornebrooke. 

"Inferior  styles  express  the  purpose  but  conceal  the  man ; 
Newman's  expresses  the  purpose  by  revealing  the  man." — 
R.  H.  ttttton. 

"There  are  touching  passages  of  another  kind,  which  are 
characteristic  of  Dr.  Newman's  writings  and  give  them  a 
peculiar  charm.  They  are  those  which  yield  momentary 
glimpses  of  a  very  tender  heart  that  has  a  burden  of  its  own, 
unrevealed  to  man.  .  .  .  It  is,  as  I  have  heard  it  de- 
scribed, as  though  he  suddenly  opened  a  book  and  gave  you 
a  glimpse  for  a  moment  of  wonderful  secrets,  and  then  as 
quickly  closed  it." — Principal  Shairp. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

' '  If  I  looked  into  a  mirror  and  did  not  see  my  face,  I  should  have 
that  sort  of  feeling  which  actually  comes  upon  me  when  I  look  into 
this  busy  world  and  see  no  reflection  of  the  Creator.  .  .  . 
Were  it  not  for  this  voice  speaking  so  clearly  in  my  conscience 


NEWMAN  497 

and  my  heart,  I  should  be  an  Atheist  or  a  Pantheist  or  a  Polythe- 
ist  when  I  looked  into  the  world." — Apologia. 

' '  I  have  never  for  an  instant  had  even  the  temptation  of  re- 
penting my  leaving  Oxford.  The  feeling  of  repentance  has  not 
even  come  into  my  mind.  How  could  it  ?  How  could  I  remain 
at  St.  Mary's  a  hypocrite  ?  how  could  I  be  answerable  for  souls 
(and  life  so  uncertain)  with  the  convictions,  or  at  least  persua- 
sions, which  I  had  upon  me  ?  It  is  indeed  a  responsibility  to  act 
as  I  am  doing  ;  and  I  feel  His  hand  heavy  upon  me  without  inter- 
mission, who  is  all  Wisdom  and  Love,  so  that  my  heart  and  mind 
are  tired  out,  just  as  the  limbs  might  be  from  a  load  on  one's  back. 
That  sort  of  dull,  aching  pain  is  mine;  but  my  responsibility 
really  is  nothing  to  what  it  would  be  to  be  answerable  for  souls, 
for  confiding,  living  souls,  in  the  English  Church  with  my  convic- 
tions. " — Apologia. 

"  How  soothing  will  then  be  the  remembrance  of  His  past  gifts  ! 
We  shall  remember  how  we  got  up  early  in  the  morning,  and  how 
all  things,  light  or  darkness,  sun  or  air,  cold  or  freshness,  breathed 
of  Him — of  Him  the  Lord  of  glory,  who  stood  over  us,  and  came 
down  upon  us,  and  gave  himself  to  us,  and  poured  forth  milk  and 
honey  for  our  sustenance,  though  we  saw  Him  not." — Present 
Blessings. 

3.  Penetration — Insight  into  Human  Life. — "  He 

was  intimately  acquainted  with  his  own  heart,  and  he  so  read 
the  hearts  of  his  fellow-men  that  he  seemed  to  know  their  in- 
most secrets.  In  his  own  words,  he  could  tell  them  what  they 
knew  about  themselves,  and  what  they  did  not  know,  till  they 
were  startled  by  the  truth  of  his  revelations.  His  knowledge 
of  human  nature,  underived  from  books  and  philosophy,  was 
intuitive,  first  hand,  and  practical." — Principal  Shairp. 

"  I  know  no  writings  which  combine,  as  Cardinal  New- 
man's do,  so  penetrating  an  insight  into  the  realities  of  the 
human  world  around  us  in  all  its  details,  with  so  unwaver- 
ing an  inwardness  of  standard  in  estimating  and  judging  of 
that  world ;  so  steady  a  knowledge  of  the  true  vanity  of 
human  life,  with  so  steady  a  love  for  that  which  is  not  van- 
ity or  vexation  of  spirit,  but  which  appeases  the  hunger  and 
32 


498  NEWMAN 

slakes  the  thirst  which  Vanity  Fair  only  stimulates." — 
R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  His  object  is  to  convince  and  to  convince  by  gaining 
your  attention,  exciting  your  interest,  enlivening  your  fancy. 
It  is  not  his  general  practice  to  address  the  pure  reason.  He 
knows  (he  well  may)  how  little  reason  has  to  do  with  men's 
convictions." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"Often  as  he  carries  us  away  by  his  close  dialectic,  his 
wonderful  readings  of  the  human  heart,  his  tender  or  indignant 
fervor,  there  remains  a  small  dark  speck  of  misgiving  which 
we  can  never  wipe  out." — -James  Martineau. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Who  can  know  ever  so  little  of  himself  without  suspecting 
all  kinds  of  imperfect  and  wrong  motives  in  every  thing  he  at- 
tempts ?  " — Private  Judgment. 

"  The  heart  is  commonly  reached,  not  through  the  reason,  but 
through  the  imagination  by  means  of  direct  impressions,  by  the 
testimony  of  facts  and  events,  by  history  and  by  description. 
Persons  influence  us,  voices  melt  us,  books  subdue  us,  and  deeds 
inflame  us." — Sermons. 

"  We  grow  up  from  boyhood  ;  our  minds  open  ;  we  go  into  the 
world  ;  we  hear  what  men  say,  or  read  what  they  put  in  print  ; 
and  thus  a  profusion  of  all  kinds  is  discharged  upon  us.  ... 
Young  people,  especially,  because  they  are  young,  color  the  as- 
semblage of  persons  and  things,  which  they  encounter  with  the 
freshness  and  grace  of  their  own  spring-tide,  look  for  all  good 
from  their  reflection  of  their  own  hopefulness,  and  worship  what 
they  have  created.  Men  of  ambition,  again,  look  upon  the  world 
as  a  theatre  for  fame  and  glory.  .  .  .  Poets,  too,  after  their 
wont,  put  their  ideal  interpretation  upon  all  things,  material  as 
well  as  moral,  and  substitute  the  noble  for  the  true." — Discipline 
of  Mind. 

4.  Subtlety. — "  You  feel  that  you  are  in  the  hands  of  a 
thinker  of  the  very  highest  powers  ;  yet  they  are  powers  rather 
of  an  intellectual  conjurer  than  of  a  teacher  who  commands 


NEWMAN  499 

your  confidence.  You  are  astonished  at  the  skill  which  is 
displayed,  and  unable  to  explain  away  the  results  ;  but  you 
are  conscious  all  the  time  that  you  are  being  played  with  ; 
you  are  perplexed,  but  you  are  not  attracted.  .  .  .  Every 
line,  every  word,  tells,  from  the  opening  sentence  to  the 
last.  .  .  .  Dr.  Newman  has  watched  and  analyzed  the 
process  of  the  mind  with  as  much  care  and  minuteness  as 
Ehrenberg  the  organization  of  animalculae.  The  knotted 
and  tangled  skein  is  disengaged  and  combed  out  until  every 
fibre  of  it  can  be  taken  up  separately  and  examined  at  leisure." 
— -J.  A.  Froude. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Conscience  is  no  longer  recognized  as  an  independent  arbiter 
of  actions,  its  authority  is  explained  away  ;  partly  it  is  super- 
seded in  the  minds  of  men  by  the  so-called  moral  sense,  which  is 
regarded  merely  as  the  love  of  the  beautiful  ;  partly  by  the  rule 
of  expediency,  which  is  forthwith  substituted  for  it  in  the  details 
of  conduct.  Now  conscience  is  a  stern,  gloomy  principle  ;  it 
tells  us  of  guilt  and  prospective  punishment.  Accordingly,  when 
its  terrors  disappear,  then  disappear  also  in  the  creed  of  the  day 
those  fearful  images  of  divine  wrath  with  which  the  Scripture 
abounds." — Parochial  Sermons. 

"  And  besides,  a  mean  system  is  often  nothing  better  than  an 
assemblage  of  words  ;  and  always  looks  such  before  it  is  proved 
to  be  something  more.  For  instance,  if  we  knew  only  of  the 
colors  white  and  black,  and  heard  a  description  of  brown  or  grey, 
and  were  told  that  those  were  neither  white  nor  black,  but  some- 
thing like  botk,  yet  between  them,  we  should  be  tempted  to  con- 
ceive our  informant  to  use  words  either  self-contradictory  or 
altogether  unmeaning ;  as  if  it  were  plain  that  what  was  not 
white  must  be  black  and  what  was  not  black  must  be  white." — 
The  Use  of  Private  Judgment. 

"  Many  a  man  supposes  that  his  investigation  ought  to  be  at- 
tended with  a  consciousness  of  his  making  it  ;  as  if  it  were  scarce- 
ly pleasing  to  God  unless  he  all  along  reflects  upon  it,  boasts 
of  it  as  a  right,  and  sanctifies  it  as  a  principle.  He  says  to  him- 
self and  others,  '  I  am  examining,  I  am  scrutinizing,  I  am  judg- 
ing, I  am  free  to  choose  or  reject,  I  am  exercising  the  right  of 


5OO  NEWMAN 

Private  Judgment.'  What  a  strange  satisfaction !  Does  it  in- 
crease the  worth  of  our  affections  to  reflect  upon  them  as  we  feel 
them  ?  Would  our  mourning  for  a  friend  become  more  valuable 
by  our  saying,  '  I  am  weeping ;  I  am  overcome  and  agonized  for 
the  second  or  third  time  ;  I  am  resolved  to  weep  ?" — The  Use  of 
Private  Judgment. 

5.  Erudition. — "Newman's  mind  was  world-wide.  He 
was  interested  in  everything  which  was  going  on  in  science, 
in  politics,  in  literature.  Nothing, was  too  large  for  him, 
nothing  too  trivial,  if  it  threw  light  upon  the  central  ques- 
tion, what  man  really  was  and  what  was  his  destiny." — -J.  A. 
Froude. 

"  You  have  triumphed  in  every  field  of  mental  effort — as 
a  philosopher,  an  historian,  a  theologian,  an  orator,  and  a 
poet.  You  have  wielded  the  most  varied  powers  with  equal 
mastery." — C? Hagan  to  Newman. 

"  One  thing  I  will  mention  which  has  always  especially 
attracted  my  attention  ;  the  wonderful  art  of  marshalling  facts 
from  all  directions  and  sources  as  illustrations  of  his  theme 
and  casting  new  and  strange  side-lights  upon  it." — Hewit. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  In  neither  the  GEdipus  Coloneus  nor  the  Plutoctetes,  the 
two  most  beautiful  plays  of  Sophocles,  is  the  plot  striking  ;  but 
how  excellent  is  the  delineation  of  the  characters  of  Antigone 
and  CEdipus  in  the  former  tragedy,  particularly  in  their  inter- 
view with  Polyneses,  and  the  various  descriptions  of  the  scene 
itself  which  the  Chorus  furnishes ! '' — Poetry  with  Reference  to 
Aristotle's  Poetics. 

"  Thus  Optics  has  for  its  subject  the  whole  visible  creation,  so 
far  forth  as  it  is  simply  visible  ;  Mental  Philosophy  has  a  nar- 
rower province  but  a  richer  one.  Astronomy,  plane  and  physi- 
cal, each  has  the  same  subject-matter,  but  views  it  or  treats  it 
differently.  Lastly,  Theology  and  Comparative  Anatomy  have 
subject-matters  partly  the  same,  partly  distinct." — Sermons. 

"  The  Council  was  opened  by  St.  Cyril  on  June  22  of  the  cur- 
rent year,  without  waiting  for  the  Bishops  representing  the  great 


NEWMAN  501 

Syrian  patriarchate,  who  were  a  few  days'  journey  from  Ephesus, 
in  spite  of  the  protest  on  that  account  of  sixty-eight  Bishops  al- 
ready there.  .  .  .  The  first  session,  in  which  Nestorius  was 
condemned  and  a  definition  or  exposition  of  faith  made,  was 
concluded  before  night.  ...  At  the  end  of  the  Acts  of  the 
first  session  the  signatures  of  about  two  hundred  Bishops  are 
found,  and  writers  of  the  day  confirm  this  number,  though  there 
is  nothing  to  show  that  the  additional  forty  or  fifty  were  added 
on  the  day  on  which  the  definition  was  passed,  June  22,  and  it  is 
more  probable  that  they  were  added  afterwards." — Letter  to  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk. 

6.  Viyid  Imagination. — "  His  satire  could  not  be  as 
powerful  as  it  is  without  his  imaginative  power  of  isolating 
what  he  wants  to  emphasize  and  contrasting  it  with  its  oppo- 
site. But  it  is  when  he  exerts  his  flexible  and  vivid  imagi- 
nation in  depicting  the  deepest  religious  passion  that  we  are 
the  most  carried  away  by  him  and  feel  his  great  genius  most 
truly.  .  .  .  Dr.  Newman's  style  is  far  from  magnificent, 
for  it  is  delicately  vivid." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  She  thought  she  was  no  longer  in  Africa,  but  in  her  own 
Greece  ;  more  sunny  and  bright  than  before  ;  but  the  inhabitants 
were  gone.  Its  majestic  mountains,  its  rich  plains,  its  expanse 
of  waters,  all  silent ;  no  one  to  converse  with ;  no  one  to  sym- 
pathize with.  And,  as  she  wandered  on  and  wondered,  suddenly 
its  face  changed,  and  its  colors  were  illuminated  tenfold  by  a 
heavenly  glory,  and  each  hue  upon  the  scene  was  of  a  beauty  she 
had  never  known,  and  seemed  strangely  to  affect  all  her  senses 
at  once,  being  fragrance  and  music  as  well  as  light.  And  there 
came  out  of  the  grottoes  and  glens  and  woods  and  out  of  the 
seas  myriads  of  bright  images,  whose  forms  she  could  not  dis- 
cern ;  and  these  came  all  around  her,  and  became  a  sort  of 
scene  or  landscape,  which  she  could  not  have  described  in  words, 
as  if 'it  were  a  world  of  spirits  not  of  matter." — Callista's  Vi- 
sion. 

"For  twelve  miles  they  extended  from  front  to  rear,  and  the 


502  NEWMAN 

whizzing  and  hissing  could  be  heard  for  twelve  miles  on  every 
side  of  them.  The  bright  sun,  though  hidden  by  them,  illu- 
mined their  bodies  and  was  reflected  from  their  quivering  wings, 
and  as  they  heavily  fell  earthward  they  seemed  like  the  innumer- 
able flakes  of  a  yellow-colored  snow,  and  like  snow  did  they  de- 
scend, a  living  carpet,  or  rather  pall,  upon  fields,  crops,  gardens, 
copses,  groves,  orchards,  vineyards,  olive-woods,  orangeries, 
palm-plantations,  and  the  deep  forests,  sparing  nothing  within 
their  reach." — Our  Locust  Plagues  of  North  Africa. 


7.  Quiet  Humor. — "  Humour  he  possesses  in  a  marked 
degree.  A  quiet  humour,  of  course,  as  berus  his  sober  profes- 
sion and  the  gravity  of  the  subjects  on  which  he  loves  to  dis- 
course. It  is  not  the  humour  that  is  founded  on  a  lively  sense 
of  the  incongruous.  ...  It  always  takes  us  unawares." 
— Augustine  Birrell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Men  speak  as  if  the  'Apostolical  Order'  were  (to  use  a 
homely  illustration)  like  the  roof  of  a  house  or  the  top  of  a  box, 
shutting  in  and  making  fast  and  tight  '  Evangelical  Truth  ; '  or 
like  '  politeness,'  the  charge  for  which,  in  some  dames'  schools, 
used  to  be  an  extra  two  pence." — The  Anglo-American  Church. 

"  It  is  said  that  a  man  may  go  on  sipping  first  white  wine  and 
then  port  till  he  loses  all  perception  which  is  which  ;  and  it  is  very 
great  good  fortune  in  this  day  if  we  manage  to  escape  a  parallel 
misery  in  theology." — The  Anglo-American  Church. 

"  Oxford  is  like  the  almshouse  for  clergymen's  widows.  Self- 
importance,  jealousy,  tittle-tattle,  are  the  order  of  the  day.  It 
has  always  been  so  in  my  time.  The  two  great  ladies,  Mrs. 
Vice-Chancellor  and  Mrs.  Divinity-Professor,  can't  agree,  and 
have  followings  respectively  ;  or  Vice-Chancellor  himself,  being  a 
new  broom,  sweeps  all  the  young  masters  clear  out  of  Convoca- 
tion House,  to  their  great  indignation  :  or  Mr.  Slavery  Dean  of 
St.  Peter's  does  not  scruple  to  say  in  a  stage-coach  that  Mr. 
Wood  is  no  scholar  ;  on  which  the  said  Wood  calls  him,  in  return, 
'  Slanderous  Slavery.'  " — Loss  and  Gain. 


NEWMAN  503 

8.  Intense  Idealism. — "  In  his  mode  of  thought  the 
first  characteristic  I  would  notice  is  his  innate  and  intense 
idealism.  .  .  .  It  is  a  thought  of  his,  always  deeply  felt 
and  many  times  repeated,  that  this  visible  world  is  but  the 
outward  shell  of  an  invisible  kingdom,  a  screen  which  hides 
from  our  view  things  far  greater  and  more  wonderful  than  any 
which  we  see,  and  that  the  unseen  world  is  close  to  us  and  ever 
ready,  as  it  were,  to  break  through  the  shell  and  manifest 
itself. " — Principal  Shairp. 

"In  his  "  Grammar  of  Assent ' '  he  pursues  his  course  in  a 
serene  atmosphere  as  though  hardly  conscious  of  the  agnosti- 
cism or  the  materialism  which  were  troubling  the  waters  of 
thought  with  dirty  bubbles.  He  wrote  on  principles  which 
were  above  such  human  accidents,  as  much  as  to  say,  clear 
your  minds  of  their  distempers,  and  look  down  from  the 
eternal  principles  of  truth  and  right  on  to  the  shifting  delusions 
of  this  folly  or  that  sin." — A.  F.  Marshall. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Can  it  be  that  these  mysterious  stirrings  of  the  heart  and. 
keen  emotions  and  strange  yearnings  after  we  know  not  what, 
and  awful  impressions  from  we  know  not  whence,  should  be 
wrought  in  us  by  what  is  unsubstantial,  and  comes  and  goes,  and 
begins  and  ends  in  itself?  No,  they  have  escaped  from  some 
higher  sphere  ;  they  are  the  outpourings  of  eternal  harmony  in 
the  medium  of  created  sound  :  they  are  echoes  from  our  home  ; 
they  are  the  voice  of  angels  or  the  Magnificat  of  saints  or  the 
living  laws  of  divine  governance  or  the  divine  attributes  ;  some- 
thing are  they  besides  themselves  which  we  cannot  compass, 
which  we  cannot  utter  ;  though  mortal  man,  and  he,  perhaps,  not 
otherwise  distinguished  above  his  fellows,  has  the  gift  of  eliciting 
them." — University  Sermons. 

"  Whenever  we  look  abroad,  we  are  reminded  of  those  most 
gracious  and  holy  beings,  the  servants  of  the  Holiest,  who  deign  to 
minister  to  the  heirs  of  salvation.  Every  breath  of  air  and  ray  of 
light  and  heat,  every  beautiful  prospect,  is,  as  it  were,  the  skirts 


504  NEWMAN 

of  their  garments,  the  waving  of  the  robes  of  those  whose  faces 
see  God  in  heaven." — Parochial  Sermons. 

"  And  yet,  in  spite  of  this  universal  world  which  we  see,  there 
is  another  world,  quite  as  far-spreading,  quite  as  close  to  us,  and 
more  wonderful  ;  another  world,  all  around  us,  though  we  see  it 
not,  and  more  wonderful  than  the  world  we  see,  for  this  reason, 
if  for  no  other,  that  we  do  not  see  it.  All  around  us  are  num- 
berless objects,  coming  and  going,  watching,  working  or  wait- 
ing, which  we  see  not  ;  this  is  that  other  world,  which  the  eyes 
reach  not  unto,  but  faith  only." — The  Invisible  World. 

9.  Sense  of  the  Mysterious. — "  The  sense  of  the  mys- 
teriousness  of  our  being — that  we  even  now  belong  to  two 
worlds,  and  that  that  part  of  ourselves  which  we  cannot  see  is 
far  more  important  than  the  part  which  we  do  see. 
One  way  in  which  he  shows  this  sense  of  mystery  is  the  feeling 
of  wonder  with  which  he  looks  upon  the  brute  creation." — 
Principal  Shairp. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  is,  indeed,  a  very  overpowering  thought,  when  we  get  to 
fix  our  minds  on  it,  that  we  familiarly  use,  I  may  say  hold  inter- 
course with,  creatures  who  are  as  much  strangers  to  us,  as  mys- 
terious, as  if  they  were  fabulous,  unearthly  beings,  more  powerful 
than  man,  and  yet  his  slaves,  which  Eastern  superstitions  have 
invented.  They  have  apparently  passions,  habits,  and  a  certain 
accountableness,  but  all  is  mystery  about  them.  ...  Is  it 
not  plain  to  our  senses  that  there  is  a  world  inferior  to  us  in  the 
scale  of  being,  with  which  we  are  connected  without  understand- 
ing what  it  is  ?  " — Parochial  Sermons. 

"  And  to  those  who  do  thus  receive  the  blessed  doctrine  under 
consideration,  it  will  be  found  to  produce  special  and  singular 
practical  effects  on  them  on  the  very  ground  of  its  mysterious- 
ness.  There  is  nothing,  according  as  we  are  given  to  see  and 
judge  of  things,  which  will  make  a  greater  difference  in  the  temper, 
character,  and  habits  of  an  individual  than  the  circumstances  of 
his  holding  or  not  holding  the  Gospel  to  be  mysterious." — The 
Mysteriousness  of  Our  Present  Being. 


NEWMAN  505 

"  We  must  not  search  curiously  what  is  His  present  office,  what 
is  meant  by  His  pleading,  His  sacrifice,  and  by  His  perpetual 
intercession  for  us.  And,  since  we  do  not  know,  we  will  studiously 
keep  to  the  figure  given  us  in  Scripture  ;  we  will  not  attempt  to 
interpret  it  or  change  the  wording  of  it,  being  wise  above  what  is 
written.  We  will  not  neglect  it  because  we  do  not  understand  it. 
We  will  hold  it  as  a  mystery." — Mysteries  in  Religion. 

10.  Keen  Irony— Satire. — "  His  sentences  stab — his 
invective  destroys." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  Newman's  irony  is  directed  against  what  he  regarded  as 
the  real  self-deception  which  went  on  in  the  minds  of  some  of 
his  own  most  intimate  associates  and  friends  of  former  days. 
Keen  as  his  irony  is,  there  is  a  certain  passion  in  it, 
too.  .  .  .  Let  anyone  who  doubts  Dr.  Newman's  power 
of  satire  read  the  closing  chapters  of  '  Loss  and  Gain. '  There 
are  passages  in  these  chapters  containing  comedy  as  effective 
as  anything  written  in  our  time." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  All  things  now  are  to  be  learned  at  once  ;  not  first  one  thing, 
then  another  ;  not  one  well,  but  many  badly.  Learning  is  to  be 
without  exertion,  without  attention,  without  toil,  without  ground- 
ing, without  advance,  without  finishing.  There  is  to  be  nothing 
individual  in  it  ;  and  this,  forsooth,  is  the  wonder  of  the  age. 
What  the  steam  engine  does  with  matter  the  printing-press  is  to 
do  with  mind  ;  it  is  to  act  mechanically,  and  the  population  is  to 
be  passively,  almost  unconsciously,  enlightened  by  the  mere 
multiplication  and  dissemination  of  volumes." — Idea  of  a  Uni- 
versity. 

"  Not  by  an  act  of  volition  but  by  a  sort  of  mechanical  impulse 
bishop  and  dean,  archdeacon  and  canon,  rector  and  curate,  one 
after  another,  each  in  his  high  tower,  off  they  set,  swinging  and 
booming,  tolling  and  chiming,  with  nervous  intenseness  and  thick- 
ening emotion  and  deepening  volume,  the  old  ding-dong  which  has 
scared  country  and  town  this  weary  time ;  tolling  and  chiming 
away,  jingling  and  clamoring  and  ringing  the  changes  on  these 
poor  half  dozen  notes  all  about '  the  popish  aggression,'  '  insolent 


506  NEWMAN 

and  insidious,'  '  insidious  and  insolent,'  '  insolent  and  atrocious,' 
'atrocious  and  insolent,'  '  atrocious,  insolent,  and  ungrateful,' 
'  ungrateful,  insolent,  and  atrocious,'  '  foul  and  oppressive,' 
'  pestilent  and  horrid,'  '  subtle  and  unholy,'  '  audacious  and  re- 
volting,' '  contemptuous  and  shameless,'  '  malignant,'  '  frightful," 
'  mad,'  '  meretricious,'  bobs  (I  think  the  singers  call  them),  bobs 
and  bobs-royal  and  triple  bob-majors  and  grandsires,  to  the  ex- 
tent of  their  compass  and  the  full  ring  of  their  metal,  in  honor  of 
Queen  Bess  and  to  the  confusion  of  the  Pope  and  the  princes  of 
the  church." — Catholicism  in  Englan'd. 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD,    1822-1888 

Biographical  Outline. — Matthew  Arnold,  born  at 
Laleham,  near  Staines,  England,  December  24,  1822;  father 
Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  afterward  head  -  master  of  Rugby ; 
Matthew  first  attends  a  private  school,  then  spends  a  year  at 
Winchester  College ;  enters  Rugby  in  1837,  and  wins  a 
scholarship  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  in  1840 ;  while  at 
Oxford,  wins  a  Latin  prize  and  the  Newdigate  prize,  but 
graduates  second  class ;  is  elected  a  fellow  of  Oriel  College 
in  1845  ;  forms  an  intimate  friendship  with  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough;  becomes  secretary  to  Lord  Lansdowne,  leader  of 
the  Whigs,  in  1847  ;  publishes  "A  Strayed  Reveller,  and  Other 
Poems  "  in  1848  ;  teaches  at  Rugby  as  assistant  master  for  a 
time  ;  in  1851  marries  a  daughter  of  Justice  Weightman,  and 
is  appointed  lay-inspector  of  non-conformist  schools  ;  does 
much  to  elevate  elementary  education  ;  in  1853  publishes 
' '  Empedocles  on  Etna  and  Other  Poems ;  "  is  called  to  the 
chair  of  poetry  at  Oxford  in  1857;  in  1858  publishes  "  Me- 
rope,  a  Tragedy,"  containing  as  a  preface  an  essay  on  the 
principles  of  criticism  ;  in  1865  publishes  "  Essays  in  Criti- 
cism ;  "  in  1859  he  is  sent  as  foreign  assistant  commissioner  to 
study  the  Continental  systems  of  primary  education  ;  in  1865 
is  sent  to  examine  into  the  state  of  secondary  education  on  the 
Continent;  in  1867  publishes  "  Schools  and  Universities  on 
the  Continent;"  in  1867  appear  "New  Poems  "  and  "A 
Study  of  Celtic  Literature  ;  "  is  re-elected  at  Oxford  in  1862, 
and  draws  much  attention  to  his  chair  ;  is  compelled  by  stat- 
ute to  retire  in  1867  ;  publishes  "  Culture  and  Anarchy  "  in 
1869  ;  refuses  later  to  stand  for  the  Oxford  position  again,  as 

507 


508  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

his  liberal  religious  views  had  made  strong  opposition  prob- 
able; publishes  "St.  Paul  and  Protestantism"  in  1870, 
"Friendship's  Garland,"  a  satire,  in  1871,  "High  Schools 
and  Universities  in  Germany"  in  1875;  publishes  "Liter- 
ature and  Dogma,"  "  God  and  the  Bible,"  and  "  Last  Es- 
says on  Church  and  Religion,"  the  latter  in  1877  ;  "  Mixed 
Essays  "  in  1879;  visits  the  United  States  in  1883  and  again 
in  1886,  lecturing  in  the  principal, cities  during  both  visits; 
publishes  "  American  Lectures  "  in  1887  ;  his  last  paper  was 
"Civilization  in  the  United  States;"  dies  at  Liverpool, 
England,  April  15,  1888. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON   MATTHEW   ARNOLD'S   STYLE. 

Mutton,   R.    H.,    "  Literary  Essays."      New    York,   1888,   Macmillan, 

310-360. 
Burroughs,   J.,  "Indoor  Studies."     Boston,  1893,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  79-127. 
Henley,  W.  E.f  "Views  and  Reviews."      New  York,    1890,   Scribner, 

83-92. 

Gallon,  A.,  "Urbana  Scripta."     London,  1885,  E.  Steck,  77-107. 
Stedman,  E.  C.,  "Victorian  Poets."     Boston,  1887,  Houghton,   Mifflin 

&  Co.,  I  :  90-100. 
Whipple,    E.    P.,    "Recollections  of    Eminent    Men."     Boston,    1887, 

Ticknor,  280-304. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  436-439. 
Dawson,  W.  J.,  "  The  Makers  of  Modern  English."    New  York,  1890, 

Whittaker,  328-341. 
Hunt,  T.  W.,    "Studies  in  Literature  and   Style."     New  York,  1890, 

Armstrong,  217-243. 
Oliphant,   Mrs.,    "The  Victorian  Age   of    English  Literature."      New 

York,  1892,  Tail,  430-435  and  570-575. 
Saintsbury,   G.,   "Corrected   Impressions."     New  York,    1895,   Dodd, 

Mead  &  Co.,  138-157. 
Watson,  R.  A.,  "  Gospels  of  Yesterday."     London,  1888,  Nisbet,  181- 

217. 
Cheney,  J.  V.,   "The  Golden  Guess."     Boston,  1892,  Lee  &  Shepard, 

77-119. 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  509 

Jacobs,  J.,    "George   Eliot,    Matthew   Arnold,    etc."      London,    1891, 

Nutt,  77-94. 
Vaughan,  R.  A.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."     London,    1858,    Parker,  2: 

332. 
Howitt,  Wm.,  "  Homes  and  Haunts  of  British  Poets."     London,  1863, 

Routledge. 
Armstrong,    R.   A.,    "Latter-Day    Teachers."     London,    1881,    Kegan 

Paul,  Trench  &Co.,  27-53. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  J?es  Judicata. "     New  York,  1892,  Scribner,  181-223. 
Hutton,   R.    H.,    "Modern  Guides  to   Religious  Thought."     London, 

1891,  Macmillan,  103-149. 

Thorne,  H.  H.,  "  Modern  Idols."     Philadelphia,  1887,  Lippincott,  7-20. 
Robertson,   J.    M.,     "Essays  Toward   a   Critical    Method."     London, 

1889,  Nimmo,  v.  index. 
Swinburne,   A.   C.,    "Essays  and  Studies."      London,    1875,  Chatto  & 

Windus,  123-124  and  123-184. 

The  Nation,  29  :  276-277  (W.  C.  Brownell);   274-275  ;  46  :  315-316. 
North  American  Review',    138:    429-444    (Whipple) ;     146:     657-662 

(Stoddard) ;    147:   473-474  (F.    Lockwood) ;    146:   515-519  (Fry). 
Century  Magazine,  14:  185-195  (Burroughs). 
Andover  Review,  lo :   232-249  (Scudder). 

Contemporary  Review,  24  :   539-567  (Hewlett)  ;  49  :  327-354  (Hutton). 
Scribner1  s  Magazine,  18:   281-289(0.  S.  Merriam). 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Literary  Insight  —  Critical  Acumen.  —  "The 
moment  we  meet  him  as  a  critic  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a 
master.  .  .  .  He  is  the  keenest,  the  wisest  critic  so  far 
adorning  English  literature ;  .  .  .  he  is  a  great  critic 
because  he  brings  to  bear  on  a  variety  of  great  subjects  ex- 
tensive knowledge,  superior  power  of  perception,  and  clear, 
pure,  adequate  utterance,  .  .  .  lifting  pure  criticism  as 
near  perhaps  as  it  may  rise  to  the  plane  of  creative  art." — 
John  Vance  Cheney. 

"  Arnold  was  pre-eminently  a  critical  force,  a  force  of  clear 
reason  and  of  steady  discernment.  He  is  an  author  whom  we 
read  ...  for  his  unfailing  intelligence  and  critical  acu- 
men and  because,  to  borrow  a  sentence  of  Goethe,  he  helps  us 


510  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

to  '  attain  certainty  and  security  in  the  appreciation  of  things 
exactly  as  they  are.'  .  .  .  It  is  undoubtedly  as  a  critic 
of  literature  that  Arnold  is  destined  to  leave  his  deepest  mark. 
In  this  field  the  classic  purity  and  simplicity  of  his  mind,  its 
extraordinary  clearness,  steadiness,  and  vitality,  are  the  quali- 
ties most  prized.  His  power  as  a  critic  is  undoubtedly  his 
power  of  definition  and  classification.  .  .  .  His  genius 
for  definition  and  analysis  finds  full  scope  in  his  work  on 
'  Celtic  Literature,'  wherein  are  combined  the  strictness  of 
scientific  analysis  with  the  finest  literary  charm."— -John 
Burroughs. 

"  His  power  of  poetic  expression  is  founded  on  a  delicate 
simplicity  of  taste.  .  .  .  [He]  shows  the  finest  insight 
into  Greek  poetry,  and  has  a  highly  cultivated  appreciation 
both  for  the  specific  aroma  of  words  and  for  the  poetical  at- 
mosphere of  thought." — Jt.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Mr.  Arnold  spares  no  pains  to  make  critics  feel  that  their 
duty  is  '  to  see  things  as  they  are,"  to  shun  insular  prejudice 
and  self-complacency,  to  avoid  all  eccentricity  and  exaggera- 
tion, never  to  praise  with  blind  enthusiasm  or  to  condemn 
with  equally  blind  indignation,  and  to  keep  themselves  pure 
from  the  contagion  of  personal  or  political  or  national  bias." 
— H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"It  is  in  Arnold  .  .  .  that  we  begin  to  find  the  ef- 
fectual expression  of  the  habit  of  analysis  and  reasoning  in 
matters  of  comparative  literature."—;/.  M.  Robertson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  grand  power  of  poetry  is  its  interpretative  power.  .  .  . 
To  ascertain  the  master  current  in  the  literature  of  an  epoch  is 
one  of  the  critic's  highest  functions.  .  .  .  The  thing  to  know 
of  a  writer  is,  where  he  is  all  himself  and  his  best  self ;  where  he 
gives  us  what  no  other  man  gives  us.  ...  For  poetry  is  sim- 
ply the  most  beautiful,  impressive,  and  widely  effective  mode  of 
saying  things,  and  hence  its  importance." — Essays  in  Criticism. 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  $11 

"  The  critical  power  is  of  lower  rank  than  the  creative.  True  ; 
but  in  assenting  to  this  proposition,  one  or  two  things  are  to  be 
kept  in  mind.  It  is  undeniable  that  the  exercise  of  a  creative 
power,  that  a  free  creative  activity  is  the  highest  function  of  man. 
.  .  .  Now,  in  literature, — I  will  limit  myself  to  literature,  for 
it  is  about  literature  that  the  question  arises — the  elements  with 
which  the  creative  power  works  are  ideas  ;  the  best  ideas  on 
every  matter  which  literature  touches,  current  at  the  time. 
.  .  .  The  grand  work  of  literary  genius  is  a  work  of  synthesis 
and  exposition,  not  of  analysis  and  discovery  ;  its  gift  lies  in  the 
faculty  of  being  happily  inspired  by  a  certain  intellectual  and 
spiritual  atmosphere,  by  a  certain  order  of  ideas,  when  it  finds 
itself  in  them;  of  dealing  divinely  with  these  ideas,  presenting 
them  in  the  most  effective  and  attractive  combinations — making 
beautiful  works  with  them,  in  short." — Essays  in  Criticism. 

"  [Mr.  Kinglake's]  style  has  not  the  warm  glow,  blithe  move- 
ment, and  soft  pliancy  of  life  such  as  the  Attic  style  has.  . 
It  has  glitter  without  warmth,  rapidity  without  ease,  effectiveness 
without  charm.  Its  characteristic  is,  that  it  has  no  soul;  all  it 
exists  for  is  to  get  its  ends,  to  make  its  points,  to  damage  its 
adversaries,  to  be  admired,  to  triumph.  A  style  so  bent  on  effect 
at  the  expense  of  soul,  simplicity,  and  delicacy  ;  a  style  so  little 
studious  of  the  charm  of  the  great  models  ;  so  far  from  classic 
truth  and  grace,  must  surely  be  said  to  have  the  note  of  pro- 
vincialism."— Literary  Influence  of  Academies. 

2.  Suggestiveness— Intellectuality. — "  He  sowed  the 
minds  of  men  with  thoughts  which  have  had  a  wide  influence 
on  the  times.  .  .  .  His  poetry  is  the  poetry  of  ideas. 
Matthew  Arnold  never  dreamed.  He  lived  a  stren- 
uous intellectual  life,  and  his  poetry  is  the  outcome  of  his 
thinking. ' '  —  George  Dawson. 

"  He  is  the  apostle  of  culture  and  clear  intelligence.  .  .  . 
Everywhere  in  his  books  we  are  brought  under  the  influence  of 
a  mind  which  clears  our  vision,  which  sets  going  a  process  of 
crystallization  in  our  thoughts,  and  brings  our  knowledge,  on  a 
certain  range  of  subjects,  to  a  higher  state  of  clearness  and 
purity.  .  .  .  Matthew  Arnold  was  probably  the  most  deeply 


512  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Greek  culture  of  any  man  of  letters 
of  our  time." — -John  Burroughs. 

"He  generally  gives  us  something  which  has  cost  him 
thought,  and  which  is  fitted  thereby  to  awaken  thought  in  us. 
There  is  in  the  style  a  kind  of  Gothic  robustness 
through  the  influence  of  which  it  impresses  itself  upon  the 
reader  and  infuses  into  his  being  something  of  this  same  Teu- 
tonic spirit.  His  style  throughout  has  this  educational  and 
educating  quality.  ...  In  the  words  of  Montesquieu, 
it  seeks  '  to  render  an  intelligent  being  still  more  intelligent.' 
The  style  is  instructive  andincitive;  .  -.  it 

serves  to  quicken  within  the  reader  a  genuine  literary  impulse. 
.  .  .  No  one  can  read  the  prose  of  Arnold  with  carefulness 
and  sympathetic  attention  without  becoming  a  wiser  man  and 
without  having  a  desire  awakened  in  him  to  become  even 
wiser  still.  .  .  .  It  is  this  intellectual  element  of  his  style 
which,  after  all,  is  its  distinctive  element." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

"  He  is  the  poet  of  the  inner  intellectual  life.  ...  In 
all  his  writings  there  is  a  strange  inwardness  :  they  never  pall 
or  weary  because,  beyond  the  beauty  of  expression,  is  always 
a  beauty  and  a  depth  of  thought." — A.  Galton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  To  walk  staunchly  by  the  best  light  one  has,  to  be  strict  and 
sincere  with  one's  self,  not  to  be  of  the  number  of  those  who  say 
and  do  not,  to  be  in  earnest, — this  is  the  discipline  by  which  alone 
man  is  enabled  to  rescue  his  life  from  thralldom  to  the  passing 
moment  and  to  his  bodily  senses,  to  ennoble  it  and  to  make  it 
eternal." — Culture  and  Anarchy. 

"  Socrates  is  poisoned  and  dead  ;  but  in  his  own  breast  does 
not  every  man  carry  about  with  him  a  possible  Socrates  in  that 
power  of  a  disinterested  play  of  consciousness  upon  his  stock 
notions  and  habits,  of  which  this  wise  and  admirable  man  gave 
all  through  his  lifetime  the  great  example,  and  which  was  the 
secret  of  his  incomparable  influence  ?  And  he  who  leads  men  to 
call  forth  and  exercise  in  themselves  this  power,  and  who  busily 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  513 

calls  it  forth  and  exercises  it  in  himself,  is  at  the  present  moment, 
perhaps,  as  Socrates  was  in  his  time,  more  in  concert  with  the 
vital  work-ing  of  men's  minds,  and  more  effectually  significant, 
than  any  House  of  Commons'  orator  or  practical  operator  in  poli- 
tics."—  Culture  and  Anarchy. 

"  In  thus  making  sweetness  and  light  to  be  characters  of  per- 
fection, culture  is  of  like  spirit  with  poetry — follows  one  law  with 
poetry.  Far  more  than  our  freedom,  our  population,  and  our  in- 
dustrialism, many  among  us  rely  upon  our  religious  organizations 
to  save  us.  I  have  called  religion  a  yet  more  important  manifes- 
tation of  human  nature  than  poetry,  because  it  has  worked  on  a 
broader  scale  for  perfection  and  with  greater  masses  of  men. 
But  the  idea  of  beauty  and  of  a  human  nature  perfect  on  all  its 
sides,  which  is  the  dominant  idea  of  poetry,  is  a  true  and  invalu- 
able idea.  .  .  It  is  destined,  adding  to  itself  the  religious 
idea  of  a  devout  energy,  to  transform  and  govern  the  other." 
—  Culture  and  Anarchy. 

3.  Repetition— Stock  Phrases. — "When  a  thought 
is  to  be  exactly  repeated  the  exact  word  first  used  must  be 
used  again.  .  .  .  Arnold's  oft-rung  phrases,  instead  of 
affectations,  are  formulated  truths  with  catch-words  which, 
once  caught,  cling  like  burrs." — John  Vance  Cheney. 

"A  view  being  taken,  a  phrase  more  or  less  felicitous  is 
selected  to  express  the  view,  and  henceforth  the  changes  are 
rung  upon  the  phrase.  .  .  .  The  trick  of  iteration,  exas- 
perating as  it  was,  effected  its  purpose;  and  the  formulae 
'  sweetness  and  light '  and  so  forth  .  .  .  have  bitten  the 
more  deeply  into  the  contemporary  consciousness  because  they 
were  formulae  and  could  be  easily  recalled." — J.Jacobs. 

"  When  he  has  polished  to  the  last  degree  of  artistic  finish 
a  definition  or  a  phrase,  it  is  no  part  of  his  purpose  to  leave  it 
in  modest  retirement  till  the  discernment  of  the  reader  dis- 
covers it.  He  has  so  little  faith  in  the  discernment  of  the 
public  that  he  emphatically  points  out  what  a  perfect  phrase  he 
has  invented  ;  and,  lest  it  be  forgotten,  makes  it  a  pivot  upon 
which  paragraph  after  paragraph  revolves." — Anonymous. 
33 


514  MATTHEW    ARNOLD 

"  Mr.  Arnold  treated  the  middle  classes  as  a  common  jury, 
and  hammered  away  at  them  remorselessly  and  with  the  most 
unblushing  iteration." — Augustine  Birrell. 

T.  W.  Hunt  speaks  of  "  the  injudicious  recurrence  of  such 
phrases  as  'sweetness  and  light,'  'the  sense  in  us  for  conduct,' 
'the  sense  in  us  for  beauty,'  etc.,"  and  Leslie  Stephen  notes 
Arnold's  "curious  delight  in  discoursing  catch- words  and  re- 
peating them  sometimes  to  weariness," 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  pursuit  of  perfection,  then,  is  the  pursuit  of  sweetness 
and  light.  He  who  works  for  sweetness  and  light  works  to  make 
the  reason  and  will  of  God  to  prevail.  .  .  .  Culture  looks 
beyond  machinery  ;  culture  hates  hatred  ;  culture  has  one  great 
passion,  the  passion  for  sweetness  and  light.  .  .  .  It  knows 
that  the  sweetness  and  light  of  the  few  must  be  imperfect  until  the 
raw  and  unkindled  masses  of  humanity  are  touched  with  sweet- 
ness and  light.  If  I  have  not  shrunk  from  saying  that  we  must 
work  for  sweetness  and  light,  so  neither  have  I  shrunk  from  say- 
ing that  it  must  have  a  broad  basis — must  have  sweetness  and 
light." — On  Sweetness  and  Light. 

"  Charlatanism  is  for  confusing  or  obliterating  the  distinctions 
between  excellent  and  inferior,  sound  and  unsound  or  only  half 
sound,  true  and  untrue  or  only  half  true.  It  is  charlatanism,  con- 
scious or  unconscious,  whenever  we  confuse  or  obliterate  these. 
And  in  poetry,  more  than  anywhere  else,  it  is  unpermissible  to 
confuse  and  obliterate  them.  For  in  poetry  the  distinction  be- 
tween excellent  and  inferior,  sound  and  unsound  or  only  half 
sound,  true  and  untrue  or  only  half  true,  is  of  paramount  impor- 
tance. .  .  .  And  the  criticism  of  life  will  be  of  power  in  pro- 
portion as  the  poetry  conveying  it  is  excellent  rather  than  inferior, 
sound  rather  than  unsound,  true  rather  than  untrue  or  only  half 
true." — Essays  in  Criticism. 

"  I  have  been  trying  to  show  that  culture  is,  or  ought  to  be,  the 
study  and  pursuit  of  happiness  ;  and  that  of  perfection,  as  pur- 
sued by  culture,  beauty,  and  intelligence — or,  in  other  words, 
sweetness  and  light — are  the  main  characters.  But  hitherto  I 
have  been  insisting  chiefly  on  beauty  or  sweetness  as  a  character 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  515 

of  perfection.  To  complete  rightly  my  design,  it  evidently  re- 
mains to  speak  of  intelligence  or  light  as  a  character  of  perfec- 
tion."— Doing  as  One  Likes. 


4.    Doubt  — Lack  of  Deep  Moral   Sympathy.— 

"  He  lacks  the  broad,  paternal,  sympathetic  element  that  the 
first  order  of  men  possess.  ...  All  his  sympathies  are 
with  the  influences  which  make  for  correctness,  for  discipline, 
for  taste,  for  perfection,  rather  than  those  that  favor  power, 
freedom,  originality,  individuality  and  the  more  heroic  and 
primary  qualities.  .  .  .  One  never  doubts  Arnold's  abil- 
ity to  estimate  a  purely  literary  and  artistic  force  ;  but  one 
sees  that  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  he  will  fully  appreciate 
a  force  of  character,  a  force  of  patriotism,  of  conscience,  of 
religion.  .  .  .  His  works,  as  models  of  urbanity  and 
lucidity,  will  endure ;  still,  they  do  not  contain  the  leaven 
which  leavens  and  modifies  races  and  times." — -John  Bur- 
roughs. 

"  Intellectual  doubt  has  found  its  voice  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
most  sincere  utterances,  and  doubt  can  never  touch  a  wide 
circle.  .  .  .  He  is  a  spirit  loosed  upon  the  sunless  sea 
of  doubt  and  ever  wearily  scanning  the  gray  horizon  for  the 
desired  but  undiscovered  haven.  .  .  .  Less  than  any 
other  who  has  felt  the  force  of  religious  truth  has  he  gained 
the  secret  of  serenity,  the  mind  that  knows,  the  calm  of  cer- 
titude, the  heart  that  rests  in  the  light  of  faith." — George 
Dawson. 

"  No  one  has  expressed  more  powerfully  and  poetically  the 
spiritual  weaknesses  [of  this  generation],  its  craving  for  a  pas- 
sion it  cannot  feel,  ...  its  desire  for  a  creed  it  cannot 
accept,  its  aspiration  for  a  peace  it  does  not  know.  But  Mr. 
Arnold  does  this  from  the  intellectual  side — sincerely  and 
delicately,  but  from  the  surface  and  never  from  the  centre. 
.  .  .  His  criticisms  .  .  .  are  always  too  much  lim- 
ited to  the  thin  superficial  layer  of  the  moral  nature  of  their 


5l6  MATTHEW    ARNOLD 

subjects,  and  take  little  comparative  interest  in  the  deeper 
individuality  beneath.  .  .  .  It  is  always  the  style  and 
superficial  doctrine  of  their  poetry,  not  the  individual  charac- 
ter and  unique  genius,  which  occupy  him." — fi.  H.  Button. 
"The  general  characteristic  of  Mr.  Arnold's  poetry  is 
moral  and  intellectual  skepticism  and  despondency." — E, 
P.  Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead, 

The  other  powerless  to  be  born, 
With  nowhere  yet  to  rest  my  head, 

Like  these  on  earth  I  wait  forlorn. 
Their  faith,  my  tears,  the  world  deride  : 
I  come  to  shed  them  at  their  side." 

—  The  Grande  Chartreuse. 

11  At  the  stage  of  experience  where  men  are  now  arrived,  it  is 
evident  to  whoever  looks  at  things  fairly  that  the  miraculous  data 
of  the  Bible  have  not  this  unique  character  of  trustworthiness  ; 
that  they,  like  other  such  data,  proceed  from  a  medium  of  im- 
perfect observation  and  boundless  credulity.  The  story  of  the 
magical  birth  and  resuscitation  of  Jesus  was  bred  in  such  a  me- 
dium ;  and  not  to  see  this,  to  build  confidently  on  the  story,  is 
hardly  more  serious  than  to  admit  the  story  of  the  magical  birth 
and  resuscitation  of  the  Virgin  because  it  is  as  beautiful.  Never 
let  us  deny  to  this  story  power  and  pathos  or  treat  with  hostility 
ideas  which  have  entered  so  deep  into  the  life  of  Christendom. 
But  the  story  is  not  true  ;  it  never  really  happened.  The  per- 
sonages never  did  meet  together  and  speak  and  act  in  the  manner 
related.  The  personages  of  the  Christian  Heaven  and  their  con- 
versations are  no  more  matter  of  fact  than  the  personages  of  the 
Greek  Olympus  and  their  conversations.  .  .  .  There  is  no 
doubt,  therefore,  about  an  Eternal  not  ourselves  that  makes  for 
righteousness,  and  to  which  men  have  transferred  that  ancient 
high  name,  God,  the  Brilliant  or  Shining,  by  which  they  once 
adored  a  mighty  object  outside  themselves,  the  sun,  which  from 
the  first  took  their  notice  as  powerful  for  their  weal  or  woe.  So 
that  God  is  admitted  ;  but  people  maintain,  besides,  that  he  is 
personal  and  thinks  and  loves." — God  and  the  Bible. 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

4.  "  The  Gods  laugh  in  their  sleeves 
To  watch  man  doubt  and  fear, 
Who  knows  not  what  to  believe 

Since  he  sees  nothing  clear, 
And  dares  stamp  nothing  false 
When  he  finds  nothing  sure." 

— Empedodes  on  Etna. 

5.  Despondency — Melancholy. — Mr.  Arnold  says  of 
himself:  %;  In  the  sincere  endeavor  to  learn  and  practise, 
amid  the  bewildering  confusion  of  our  times,  what  is  sound 
and  true  in  poetical  art,  I  seemed  to  myself  to  find  the  only 
sure  guidance,  the  only  solid  footing  among  the  ancients. 
They,  at  any  rate,  knew  what  they  wanted  in  art  and  we  do 
not." 

"  Moral  uneasiness  and  spiritual  darkness  often  verging  on 
despair,  .  .  [a]  tone  of  sad  yearning  and  bitter  dis- 

satisfaction .  .  .  with  modified  intensity  runs  through  all 
the  poems  of  Mr.  Arnold's  middle  period.  .  .  .  [There 
is  a]  neutral  transitionary  attitude  between  allegiance  to  au- 
thority that  has  ceased  to  control  him  and  acceptance  of 
a  system  that  does  not  command  his  reverence." — R.  H. 
Hutton. 

"An  undertone  of  sadness  runs  like  a  sombre  current  be- 
low the  visible  level  of  his  verse.  .  .  .  Seriousness  is  too 
often  seen  to  give  place  to  sadness  and  to  a  sadness  that  is 
nothing  less  than  Byronic  and  oppressive." — T.  ]V.  Hunt. 

"  He  is  full  of  an  incommunicable  grief,  and  in  the  effort 
to  express  what  he  suffers,  he  reaches  to  an  intensity  of  utter- 
ance which  we  find  nowhere  else  in  his  poetry.  .  .  .  He 
cannot  conceal  from  us  that  there  is  no  peace  in  culture.  A 
pervading  sadness  and  despair  are  its  most  memorable  features. 
There  breathes  throughout  the  sadness  of  failure,  the  distress 
of  faithlessness.  .  .  .  [He  strikes]  the  iron  chord  of  a 
militant  yet  despairing  pessimism." — George  Dawson. 

"  In  the  melancholy  with  which  the  sick  King  of  Bokhara 


518  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

broods,  ...  in  the  gloomy  resentment  of  Mycerinus, 
.  .  .  in  the  despair  of  Empedocles  on  Etna  in  his  fail- 
ure to  solve  the  riddle  of  the  painful  earth,  ...  in  those 
fine  lines  written  by  a  death-bed,  ...  in  the  melodious 
sadness  of  the  personal  retrospects  in  'Resignation,'  .  .  . 
in  the  consciously  hopeless  cravings  of  '  The  Scholar  Gipsy  ' 
and  '  Thyrsis,'  ...  he  delineates  the  intellectual  weak- 
ness and  dejection  of  the  age,  and  feebly  though  poetically 
shadows  forth  his  own  hopeless  hope  of  a  remedy." — R.  H. 
Button. 

"  Didacticism  and  Pessimism  constitute  the  main  objection 
to  the  body  of  his  poetry — too  naked  teaching,  too  free  use  of 
'  the  fearful  gift,'  the  'glance  of  melancholy,'  too  much  mal- 
ady and  too  little  melody,  too  little  ease  and  spontaneity,  too 
little  of  the  bubbling  music  of  joy.  ...  Of  a  truth, 
Arnold  is  a  man  of  sorrows." — -John  Vance  Cheney. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  O  born  in  days  when  wits  were  fresh  and  clear, 
And  life  ran  gaily  as  the  sparkling  Thames ; 
Before  this  strange  disease  of  modern  life, 

With  its  sick  hurry,  its  divided  aims, 
Its  heads  o'ertaxed,  its  palsied  hearts,  was  rife — 
Fly  hence,  our  contact  fear! 

But  fly  our  paths,  our  feverish  contact  fly  ! 
For  strong  the  infection  of  our  mental  strife, 
Which,  though  it  gives  no  bliss,  yet  spoils  for  rest ; 
And  we  should  win  thee  from  thy  own  fair  life, 
Like  us  distracted  and  like  us  unblest." 

—The  Scholar-Gipsy. 

"  The  brave,  impetuous  heart  yields  everywhere 
To  the  subtle,  contriving  head  ; 
Great  qualities  are  trodden  down, 
And  littleness  united 
Is  become  invincible." — Empedocles  on  Etna. 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  $19 

"  Wise  men  everywhere  know  that  we  must  keep  up  our  cour- 
age and  hope.  .  .  .  But  the  very  word  duty  points  to  an 
effort  and  a  struggle  to  maintain  our  hope  unbroken." — Dis- 
courses in  America. 


6.  Intellectual    and     Moral    Superciliousness.— 

"  He  took  a  sort  of  perverse  delight  in  intellectual  isolation, 
and  lectured  his  antagonists  with  the  serene  positiveness  of 
one  who  was  perfectly  convinced  that  he  knew  everything 
better  than  anybody  else  knew  anything.  .  .  .  There  is 
a  touch  of  literary  dandyism  in  all  Arnold's  prose.  He  al- 
ways figures,  as  someone  has  well  said,  as  '  a  superior  person  ' 
talking  down  to  the  intellectual  incapacities  of  his  inferiors." 
— George  Dawson. 

"  Mr.  Arnold  has  always  impressed  on  his  poems  that  air 
of  aristocratic  selectness  and  conscious  exclusiveness  which 
Goethe,  even  after  being  the  popular  poet  of  Germany,  claimed 
for  his  own  writings.  .  .  .  Mr.  Arnold's  poems  draw 
their  life  entirely  from  the  proud  self-conscious  zone  of  mod- 
ern experience,  and  have  scarcely  given  forth  one  single  note 
of  popular  grief  and  joy." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Matthew  Arnold  is  the  poet  of  the  universities — of  the 
intellectual  classes.  .  .  .  He  has  not  in  him  the  mixt- 
ure of  common  life  and  feeling  which  can  conciliate  that 
inner  circle  with  the  wider  one  of  the  general  world,  or  the 
warm  inspiration  of  passion  and  emotional  nature  which  goes 
to  the  common  heart." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

11  His  critical  style  has  this  fundamental  fault,  a  dogmatic 
spirit.  .  .  .  This  dogmatism  is  apparent  in  all  his  prose. 
No  man  has  opposed  the  dogmatic  tone  more  than  he,  yet  he 
is  here  among  the  chief  of  sinners.  .  .  .  The  critic  is 
thoroughly  satisfied  with  himself.  .  .  .  This  aristocratic 
manner  was  more  and  more  apparent  in  Mr.  Arnold  and 
never  .more  pronounced  than  in  his  later  utterances.  . 
He  preferred  to  appear  as  the  apostle  of  classical  restraint. 


52O  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

The  one  most  repellant  feature  of  this  distinguished  writer  is 
this  imperial  pompousness,   this  air  of  self-assertion,   which 
amounts  at  times  to  nothing  short  of  a  literary  strut.      .     . 
In  his  American  addresses  we  note  most  conspicuous  examples 
of  this  parade  of  parts — this  literary  hauteur." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  mere  nomenclature  of  the  country  [the  United  States] 
sets  upon  a  cultivated  person  like  the  incessant  pricking  of  pins. 
What  people  in  whom  the  sense  of  beauty  and  fitness  was  quick 
could  have  invented  or  could  tolerate  the  hideous  names  ending 
in  '  ville  '  —  the  Briggsvilles,  Higginsvilles,  Jacksonvilles  —  rife 
from  Maine  to  Florida,  the  jumble  of  unnatural  and  inappropri- 
ate names  everywhere  ?  " — Last  Words  on  America. 

"  Wragg  !  If  we  are  to  talk  of  ideal  perfection,  of  the  best  in 
the  whole  world,  has  any  one  reflected  what  a  touch  of  grossness 
in  our  race,  when  an  original  shortcoming  in  the  more  delicate 
spiritual  perceptions  is  shown  by  the  natural  growth  amongst  us 
of  such  hideous  names  —  Higginbottom,  Stiggins,  Bugg  !  In 
Ionia  and  Attica  they  were  luckier  in  this  respect  than  '  the  best 
race  in  the  world  ;'  by  the  Ilissus  there  was  no  Wragg,  poor 
thing  !  " — Essays  in  Criticism. 

"  It  may  be  very  well  for  born  Hebraisers,  like  Mr.  Spurgeon, 
to  Hebraise  ;  but  for  liberal  statesmen  to  Hebraise  is  surely  un- 
safe, and  to  see  poor  old  liberal  hacks  Hebraising,  whose  real 
self  belongs  to  a  kind  of  negative  Hellenism — a  state  of  moral 
indifference  without  intellectual  ardor  —  is  even  painful.  And 
when,  by  our  Hebraising,  we  neither  do  what  the  better  mind  of 
statesmen  prompted  them  to  do  nor  win  the  affections  of  the 
people  we  want  to  conciliate  nor  yet  reduce  the  opposition  of 
our  adversaries  but  rather  brighten  it,  surely  it  may  not  be  un- 
reasonable to  Hellenize  a  little." — Culture  and  Anarchy. 

7.  Cool,  Stinging  Satire. — "  He  is  a  master  of  ironi- 
cal reasoning.  .  .  .  He  never  uses  a  literary  bludgeon  ; 
he  delights  rather  in  the  sharp  rapier-thrust,  the  swift  retort, 
the  quiet  ironical  smile  that  is  so  much  harder  to  bear  than 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  521 

the  loud  derisive  laughter  of  a  Johnson   or  a  Carlyle." — 
George  Dawson. 

"  His  best  friends  might  wish  to  see  him — they  would  cer- 
tainly be  curious  to  see  him — lose  his  temper  for  once  in  a 
way  over  some  subject  that  deserves  to  rouse  his  ire." — J. 
Jacobs. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  In  the  following  essay  it  will  be  seen  how  our  society  dis- 
tributes itself  into  Barbarians,  Philistines,  and  Populace  ;  and 
America  is  just  ourselves,  with  the  Barbarians  quite  left  out,  and 
the  Populace  nearly." — Culture  and  Anarchy. 

"Why,  one  has  heard  people,  fresh  from  reading  certain  arti- 
cles of  the  Times  on  the  Registrar-General's  returns  of  marriages 
and  births  in  this  country,  who  would  talk  of  our  large  English 
families  in  quite  a  solemn  strain,  as  if  they  had  something  in  itself 
beautiful,  elevating,  and  meritorious  in  them  ;  as  if  the  British 
Philistine  would  have  only  to  present  himself  before  the  Great 
Judge  with  his  twelve  children  in  order  to  be  received  among  the 
sheep  as  a  matter  of  right !  " — Culture  and  Anarchy. 

"  The  reader  may  judge  of  my  astonishment,  therefore,  at  find- 
ing, from  Mr.  Wright's  pamphlet,  that  I  had  '  declared  with 
much  solemnity  that  there  is  not  any  proper  reason  for  his  ex- 
isting.' That  I  never  said  ;  but,  on  looking  back  at  my  lectures 
on  translating  Homer,  I  find  that  I  did  say,  not  that  Mr.  Wright 
but  that  Mr.  Wright's  version  of  the  Iliad,  repeating  in  the  main 
the  merits  and  defects  of  Cowper's  version,  as  Mr.  Sotheby's  re- 
peated those  of  Pope's  version,  had,  if  I  might  be  pardoned  for 
saying  so,  no  proper  reason  for  existing.  Elsewhere  I  expressly 
spoke  of  the  merit  of  his  version  ;  but  I  confess  that  the  phrase, 
qualified  as  I  have  shown,  about  its  want  of  a  proper  reason  for 
existing,  I  used.  Well,  the  phrase  had,  perhaps,  too  much  vivac- 
ity ;  we  have  all  of  us  a  right  to  exist,  we  and  our  works  ;  an  un- 
popular author  should  be  the  last  person  to  call  in  question  this 
right.  So  I  gladly  withdraw  the  offending  phrase,  and  I  am  sorry 
for  having  used  it." — Essays  in  Criticism, 


522  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

8.  Classic  Finish — Clearness — Purity. — "Arnold 
is  probably  the  purest  classic  writer  that  English  literature,  as 
yet,  has  to  show;  classic  not  merely  in  the  repose  and  purity 
of  his  style,  but  in  the  unity  and  simplicity  of  his  mind. 
The  man  of  all  others  among  recent  English  writers 
who  had  in  a  pre-eminent  degree  the  gift  of  style  . 
was  Matthew  Arnold." — -John  Burroughs. 

"  That  natural  light  of  mind,  that  power  of  reception  and 
reflection  of  things  or  thoughts,  whrch  I  most  admire  in  so 
much  of  Mr.  Arnold's  work.  I  mean  by  it  much  more  than 
mere  facility  or  transparency ;  more  than  brilliance,  more 
than  ease  or  excellence  of  style.  .  .  .  No  poem  in  any 
language  can  be  more  perfect  as  a  model  of  style  [than  '  Thyr- 
sis  ']....  No  countryman  of  ours  since  Keats  died 
has  made  or  has  found  words  fall  into  such  faultless  folds  and 
forms  of  harmonious  line.  .  .  .  No  one  has  in  like  meas- 
ure that  tender  and  final  quality  of  touch  which  tempers  the 
excessive  light  and  suffuses  the  refluent  shade.  .  .  .  No 
poet  has  ever  come  so  near  the  perfect  Greek." — Swinburne. 

"  Mr.  Arnold  belongs  to  the  classical  school  of  poetry, 
regarding  the  Greeks,  with  their  strength  and  simplicity  of 
phrase  and  their  perfect  sense  of  form,  as  his  masters.  To 
the  imaginative  power  of  a  true  poet  he  adds  a  delicacy  and 
refinement  of  taste  and  a  purity  and  severity  of  phrase  which 
uncultured  readers  often  mistake  for  boldness.  Nowhere  in 
his  poems  do  we  find  those  hackneyed  commonplaces,  decked 
out  with  gaudy  and  ungraceful  ornament,  which  pass  for 
poetry  with  many  people.  .  .  .  There  are  few  poems 
which  show  such  a  refined  sense  of  beauty,  such  dignity  and 
self-restraint,  such  admirable  adaptation  of  the  form  to  the 
subject  as,  for  example,  '  Tristam  and  Iseult,'  '  Sohrab  and 
Rustum,'  and  the  '  Forsaken  Merman.'  '  — H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  He  has  originality,  ...  a  style  of  the  utmost 
lucidity  and  of  frequent  force.  .  .  .  He  is  never  obscure  ; 
he  says  what  he  has  to  say  with  admirable  definiteness  and 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  523 

precision  of  phrase.  .  .  .  [He  has  an]  admirable  terse- 
ness and  distinctness  of  expression." — George  Dawson. 

"  The  chief  note  of  his  style  is  an  exquisite  and  classical 
quality  of  touch.  .  .  .  The  verse  of  Arnold  is  bathed  in 
lucid  and  tranquil  light." — Horace  Scudder. 

"  Arnold's  prose  is  luminous  like  a  steel  mirror." — R.  H. 
Hutton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"A  few  years  afterwards  the  great  English  middle-class,  the 
kernel  of  the  nation,  the  class  whose  intelligent  sympathy  had  up- 
held a  Shakespeare,  entered  the  prison  of  Puritanism,  and  had 
the  key  turned  on  its  spirit  there  for  two  hundred  years." — Es- 
say on  HeinricJi  Heine. 

"  One  man  in  many  millions,  a  Heine,  may  console  himself 
and  keep  himself  erect  in  suffering  by  a  colossal  irony  of  this 
sort,  by  covering  himself  and  the  Universe  with  the  red  fire  of 
this  sinister  mockery,  but  the  many  millions  cannot,  cannot  if 
they  would." — Essay  on  Pagan  and  Medieval  Religious  Senti- 
ment. 

"  What  Lady  is  this,  whose  silk  attire 

Gleams  so  rich  in  the  light  of  the  fire  ? 

The  ringlets  on  her  shoulders  lying 

In  their  flitting  lustre  vying 

With  the  clasp  of  burnished  gold 

Which  her  heavy  robe  doth  hold  ? 

What  place  is  this,  and  who  are  they  ? 
Who  is  that  kneeling  lady  fair  ? 
And  on  his  pillows  that  pale  knight 
Who  seems  of  marble  on  a  tomb  ? 
How  comes  it  here,  this  chamber  bright 
Through  whose  mullioned  windows  clear 
The  castle  court  all  wet  with  rain, 
The  drawbridge  and  the  moat  appear 

and  far  away 
The  unquiet  bright  Alantic  plain  ?  " 

—  Tristam  and  Iseult. 


CARLYLE,  1795-1881 

Biographical  Outline. — Thomas  Carlyle,  born  Decem- 
ber 4,  1795,  at  Ecclefechan,  Dumfries,  Scotland  ;  father  a 
stone-mason;  Thomas  studies  at  the  village-school  and  after- 
ward at  Annan  Grammar  School,  which  he  enters  in  1804; 
in  November,  1809,  he  enters  Edinburgh  University,  walking 
the  eighty  miles  thence  from  his  home  ;  his  parents  wish  him 
to  study  for  the  ministry ;  he  leaves  the  University  in  the 
summer  of  1814,  and  becomes  mathematical  tutor  in  An- 
nandale  Academy  at  a  salary  of  ^70  per  year ;  he  makes  a 
profound  study  of  Newton's  " Principia ;"  in  the  autumn  of 
1816  becomes  master  of  a  school  in  Kilcardy,  where  he  forms 
an  intimate  friendship  with  Edward  Irving,  and  reads  his- 
tory voraciously  in  Irving's  library  ;  is  unpopular  as  a  teacher, 
and  resigns  in  October,  1818;  goes  to  Edinburgh  without  a 
definite  aim  ;  takes  up  mineralogy  and,  incidentally,  German  ; 
earns  a  meagre  support  by  tutoring  and  translating  scienti- 
fic pamphlets  from  the  French  ;  is  tortured  by  dyspepsia ; 
spends  the  summer  of  1819  on  his  father's  farm  at  Mainhill, 
Annandale,  wandering  distracted  about  the  moors,  "eating 
my  own  heart,  .  .  .  through  mazes  of  doubt,  perpetual 
questionings  unanswered;"  returns  to  Edinburgh  in  Novem- 
ber, 1819,  and  resumes  private  teaching  and  attendance  on 
law  lectures;  becomes  disgusted  with  the  law  by  March,  1820, 
and  visits  Irving  at  Glasgow  ;  studies  German  literature  at 
Mainhill  during  the  summer  of  1821,  and  writes  articles  for 
"  Brewster's  Cyclopaedia;"  in  September,  1820,  returns  to 
Edinburgh,  "  determined  to  find  out  something  stationary  " 
and  "sick  of  this  drivelling  state  of  painful  idleness;  "  con- 
tinues private  teaching  and  hack  writing,  earning  a  plain 

524 


CARLYLE  525 

living  but  still  subject  to  mental  "  temptations  in  the  wilder- 
ness ;"  London  booksellers  refuse  his  proposal  to  make  a  com- 
plete translation  of  Schiller's  works;  in  June,  1821,  he 
achieves  what  he  calls  in  "Sartor  Resartus "  his  "new- 
birth,"  when  he  "  authentically  took  the  devil  by  the  nose; " 
in  May,  1821,  he  visits  Haddington,  with  Irving,  and  meets 
Jane  Baillie  Welsh,  with  whom  Irving  was  then  in  love  ; 
Carlyle  becomes  her  tutor  in  German  ;  through  Irving's  aid 
he  becomes  tutor  at  Edinburgh  in  the  family  of  Mr.  Buller,  a 
retired  East  India  merchant,  at  a  salary  of  £200  ;  he  trans- 
lates Legendre's  "Geometry"  successfully,  and  contem- 
plates various  ambitious  literary  works ;  is  made  a  familiar 
member  of  the  Buller  family,  where  he  has  many  social  ad- 
vantages;  in  1823  begins  writing  his  "  Life  of  Schiller  "  for 
the  London  Magazine ;  removes  with  the  Bullers  to  Kin- 
naird  House,  near  Dunkeld  ;  continues  his  correspondence 
with  Jane  Welsh,  who  frowns  upon  his  matrimonial  advances  ; 
translates  Goethe's  "  Wilhelm  Meister "  in  1824,  and  re- 
ceives good  pay  for  it ;  in  1824  he  first  visits  London,  where 
he  continues  to  act  as  tutor  to  Charles  and  Arthur  Buller, 
and  rene\vs  his  intimacy  with  Irving,  then  at  the  height  of 
his  London  fame  (meanwhile  Irving,  though  devoted  to  Jane 
Welsh,  had  reluctantly  kept  a  youthful  obligation  by  marry- 
ing a  lady  to  whom  he  had  become  engaged  years  before)  ; 
Carlyle  meets  Procter,  Cunningham,  Campbell,  and  Cole- 
ridge ;  resides  briefly  at  Ke\v,  and  gives  up  the  Buller  tutor- 
ship in  July,  1824  ;  spends  two  months  in  Birmingham  as  the 
guest  of  one  Badams,  a  physician  and  a  friend  of  Irving,  who 
tries  to  cure  Carlyle's  dyspepsia;  takes  lodgings  with  the 
Irvings  at  Dover  in  October,  1824  ;  spends  twelve  days  in 
Paris,  where  he  meets  Legendre,  hears  Cuvier  lecture,  and 
sees  Laplace  and  others ;  returns  to  Dover  and  takes  lodgings 
in  London  in  the  autumn  of  1824  ;  remains  in  London  till 
midwinter,  putting  his  "Life  of  Schiller"  into  final  book 
form ;  becomes  engaged  to  Jane  Welsh  (conditionally)  in  the 


526  CARLYLE 

spring  of  1825  ;  returns  to  his  father's  home  at  Mainhill  in 
March,  1825,  having  engaged  to  make  further  translations 
from  the  German,  and  takes  a  farm  at  Hoddam  Hill ;  Miss 
Welsh  visits  him  and  his  family  ;  gives  up  Hoddam  Hill  in 
1826  and  removes,  with  his  father's  family,  to  Scotsbrig,  near 
Ecclefechan  ;  marries  Jane  Welsh  at  Templand,  October  17, 
1826,  and  takes  a  house  at  Comely  Bank,  Edinburgh;  enter- 
tains De  Quincey,  Hamilton,  Wilson,  and  others ;  completes 
his  "  Specimens  of  German  Romance  "  late  in  1826  ;  finds  no 
remunerative  occupation,  and  so  decides  to  remove  to  his 
wife's  moorland  farm  at  Craigenputtock;  in  June,  1827,  he 
meets  Jeffrey,  and  engages  to  write  for  the  Edinburgh  Review 
the  essays  now  known  as  the  "Miscellanies;"  is  greatly  en- 
couraged by  presents  and  an  appreciative  letter  from  Goethe 
in  July,  1827  ;  Jeffrey  makes  an  unsuccessful  effort  to  obtain 
for  Carlyle,  through  Brougham,  a  chair  in  the  new  London 
University  ;  an  effort  of  Irving  and  others  to  secure  for  him  a 
chair  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews  also  fails ;  he  leaves 
Edinburgh  for  Craigenputtock  May  26,  1827;  continues  his 
contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  and  publishes  his 
essay  on  Voltaire  in  the  Foreign  Review  in  April,  1829; 
joins  the  staff  of  the  new  Eraser's  Magazine  in  May,  1830; 
writes  "Sartor  Resartus  "  in  1831,  but  fails  to  find  a  pub- 
lisher; spends  the  autumn  of  1831  in  London,  where  he  meets 
John  Stuart  Mill,  Leigh  Hunt,  and  others ;  returns  to  Craig- 
enputtock in  April,  1832  ;  corresponds  with  Mill  ;  publishes 
his  essay  on  Goethe  in  the  Foreign  Quarterly  in  July,  1832  ; 
writes  his  essay  on  Diderot,  and  spends  the  winter  of  1832-33 
in  Edinburgh  ;  returns  in  the  spring  to  Craigenputtock  (where 
he  is  visited  by  Emerson)  and  writes  the  "Diamond  Neck- 
lace;" after  receiving  Thiers's  History  from  Mill,  Carlyle 
decides  to  undertake  a  history  of  the  French  Revolution  ; 
begins  publishing  "Sartor  Resartus"  in  Eraser's  in  Novem- 
ber, 1833;  settles,  June  10,  1834,  with  his  wife  at  5  Cheyne 
Row,  Chelsea,  London,  where  he  resides  till  his  death; 


CARLYLE  527 

"Sartor  Resartus "  excites  "universal  disapprobation;" 
Carlyle  completes  the  manuscript  of  the  first  volume  of  the 
"French  Revolution,"  which  is  loaned  to  Mill  and  is  acci- 
dentally burned;  he  refuses  a  position  on  the  staff  of  the 
London  Times  ;  completes  the  second  manuscript  of  the  first 
volume  of  the  "  French  Revolution  "  September  22,  1835  ; 
toils  at  the  second  volume  during  1836,  "mind  weary,  body 
very  sick  ;  "  is  comforted  by  Sterling  and  Leigh  Hunt;  pub- 
lishes his  essay  on  Mirabeau  and  the  "Diamond  Necklace" 
in  1836  ;  "  Sartor  Resartus  "  is  published  in  America  through 
Emerson's  influence,  in  1836;  Carlyle  completes  the  second 
volume  of  the  "French  Revolution  "  January  12,  1837,  and 
publishes  both  volumes  soon  afterward ;  begins  his  first  course 
of  public  lectures  (on  German  Literature)  in  London,  May  i, 
1837  ;  the  lectures  are  financially  successful  and  are  followed 
by  three  more  courses  in  three  successive  years,  one  on  the 
History  of  Literature  and  Periods  of  European  Culture,  one 
on  Revolutions  in  Modern  Europe,  and  one  on  Hero  Worship 
— all  lost  or  imperfectly  reported  except  the  last ;  Carlyle 
becomes  recognized  as  a  social  "lion,"  but  repulses  many 
would-be  influential  friends;  in  1838-39  he  receives,  through 
Emerson,  ^150  as  the  profits  of  the  American  edition  of 
"Sartor  Resartus;"  reviews  Lockhart's  "Life  of  Scott" 
in  January,  1838  (in  1839  Emerson  publishes  in  America 
Carlyle's  "Miscellaneous  Essays");  "Chartism,"  written 
in  1839  and  refused  by  the  Quarterly,  is  published  in  pam- 
phlet form  in  1840  ;  Carlyle  publishes  "  Heroes  and  Hero- 
Worship"  early  in  1841,  and  retires  to  Yorkshire  "  to  ripen 
or  rot  for  awhile;"  writes  the  preface  to  Emerson's  Essays 
and  little  else  during  1841  ;  the  death  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  moth- 
er, in  February,  1842,  brings  Mrs.  Carlyle  into  a  property 
of  ^200  a  year ;  Carlyle  visits  Belgium  briefly  with  the 
Bullers  in  1842,  and  in  1843  visits  Charles  Redwood  in 
Wales;  he  publishes  "  Past  and  Present  "  in  April,  1843,  and 
"  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Oliver  Cromwell  "  in  December, 


528  CARLYLE 

1845  ;  a  new  edition  is  demanded  by  May,  1846  ;  he  is  again 
visited  by  Emerson  in  the  autumn  of  1847  ;  makes  a  tour  of 
Ireland  in  the  summer  of  1849,  and  makes  notes  not  intended 
for  publication  (published  in  1882)  ;  publishes  his  "  Discourse 
on  the  Nigger  Question  "  in  Eraser's,  December,  1849,  an(^ 
begins  his  "  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  ;"  publishes  the  "  Life  of 
John  Sterling"  in  1851;  begins  work  on  his  "  Friedrich 
II."  in  1852,  of  which  he  publishes  the  first  two  volumes 
in  1858  and  the  sixth  and  last  in  -1865;  visits  Germany  in 
1852  ;  is  elected  Lord  Rector  of  Edinburgh  University  in 
November,  1865;  delivers  his  inaugural  address  in  March, 
1866 ;  leaves  Edinburgh  to  visit  his  brother  James  at  Scots- 
brig,  and  while  there  learns  of  his  wife's  sudden  death  while 
she  is  driving  in  the  Park ;  writes  two  volumes  of  the  "  Rem- 
iniscences" in  1866  (much  of  it  never  intended  for  publica- 
tion), including  his  recollections  of  Irving  and  Jeffrey  ;  pub- 
lishes his  pamphlet  "  Shooting  Niagara  "  in  1867  ;  publishes 
"  The  Early  Kings  of  Norway  "in  1875  ;  refuses  many  royal 
honors  and  decorations  and  the  offer  of  a  pension  ;  dies  in 
London  February  5,  1881. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY    ON    CARLYLE'S   STYLE. 

Arnold,  A.  S.,  "Thomas  Carlyle."     London,  1888,  Ward  &  Downey. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Literary  Works — Essays."     Boston,    1891,    Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  2:   77-120. 
Robertson,    J.    M.,    "Modern    Humanists."       London,     1891,     Swan, 

Sonnenschein  &  Co.,  1-61. 
Burroughs,  J.,  "Indoor  Studies."     Boston,  1893,   Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  128-162. 
Caird,    E.,    "Essays   on  Literature."      New  York,    1892,    Macmillan, 

230-267. 
Masson,    D.,    "Carlyle   Personally  and   In    His   Writings."       London, 

1885,  Macmillan. 
Home,    R.    H.,    "A    New    Spirit   of   the    Age."      New    York,    1844, 

Harper,  333-348- 
Lancaster,  H.  H.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."     Edinburgh,  1876,  Edmond- 

ston  &  Douglass,  229-296. 


CARLYLE  529 

Hutton,    R.  H.,  "Modern   Guides  of  English  Thought."     New  York, 

1891,  Macmillan,  1-46. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Essays  and   Reviews."     Boston,    1861,   Ticknor,   2: 

387-392. 
Stephen,   L.,  "Hours  in  a  Library."     New  York,    1894,   Putnam,   3: 

271-306. 
Gilfillan,    G.,    "Literary  Portraits."      Edinburgh,    1851,   J.    Hogg,    I: 

84-104  and  3:   313-328. 
Morley,  J.,  "Critical   Miscellanies."     New  York,    1893,  Macmillan,  I: 

135-203. 
Dawson,  G.,  "Biographical  Lectures."      London,    1886,    Kegan    Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  358-437. 
Emerson,  R.  W.,   "  English  Traits."     Boston,  1886,  Phillips,  Sampson, 

&  Co.,  21-24  a°d  249. 
Norton,  C.  E.,  "Correspondence   of  Carlyle  and    Emerson."     Boston, 

1886,  Ticknor  &  Co.,  2  vols. 

Nichol,  J.,  "Carlyle."     Edinburgh,  1881,  McNiven  &  Wallace. 
Whipple,    E.  P.,    "American   Literature  and  Other  Papers."     Boston, 

1863,  Ticknor,  Reid  &  Fields,  246  and  387-392. 
Scherer,    E.,    "Essays   on    English    Literature."       New    York,    1891, 

Scribner,  226-236. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicta."     New  York,  1881,  Scribner,  I:    1-55. 
Giles,    H.,  "Lectures  and  Essays."      Boston,   1861,  Ticknor,   Reid   & 

Fields,  2  :   286-299. 

Brimley,  G.,  "Essays."     London,  1860,  Macmillan,  239-251. 
Lowell,    J.  R.,  "My  Study  Windows."     Boston,   1871,  J.  R.  Osgood, 

115-149. 
Dowden,    E.,    "Studies  in   Literature."      London,    1878,  C.    K.    Paul, 

72-78. 
Bayne,  P.,  "Lessons  From  My  Masters."     New  York,  1879,  Harper, 

3-192. 
Shairp,  J.   S.   C.,    "Aspects    of    Poetry."      Boston,    1882,    Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  407-437. 
Arnold,   M.,    "Discourses    in   America."      London,    1885,    Macmillan, 

138-207. 
Minto,  W.,  "English  Prose  Literature."    Edinburgh,  1886,  Blackwood, 

I30-I77- 
Morley,    H.,  "English   Literature  in  the  Reign  of  Victoria. "     Leipzig, 

1881,  Tauchnitz,  294-316. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English   Literature."      New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  420-428. 

34 


530  CARLYLE 

Smith,  J.  C.,  "Writings  by  the  Way."     Edinburgh,  1885,  Blackwood, 

1-62. 
Sterling,  John,  "Essays  and  Tales."     London,  1848,  J.  W.  Parker,  I  : 

252-381. 
Russell,   W.   C,    "The  Book  of  Authors."      London,   n.   d.,   Warne, 

462-465. 
Saintsbury,   G.,    "Corrected  Impressions."     New  York,    1895,   Dodd, 

Mead  &  Co.,  41-60. 
Oliphant,   Mrs.,    "The  Victorian  Age  of   English  Literature."      New 

York,  1892,  Tait,  101-121. 
Davey,    S.,    "Dickens,    Carlyle,    Darwin,"   etc.       London,     1879,    E. 

Bumpus,  45-98. 
Friswell,  J.    H.,  "  Modern  Men  of  Letters."     London,   1870,   Hodder 

&  Stoughton,  273-282. 
Kebbell,  T.  E.,  "Essays  upon  History  and  Politics."     London,  1864, 

Chapman  &  Hall,  72-97. 
McCie,  G.,  "The  Religion  of  Our  Literature."     London,  1875,  Hodder 

&  Stoughton,  1-68. 

Harnley,  E.  B.,  "  Essay  on  Carlyle."     Edinburgh,  1881,  Blackwood. 
Larkin,   H.,  "  Carlyle,  the  Open   Secret,"  etc.       London,  1886,  Kegan 

Paul,  Trench  &  Co.,  128-162. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  "  First  Forty  Years  of  Carlyle's  Life."     New  York,  1882, 

Scribner. 
Dowden,  E.,  "Transcripts  and  Studies."     London,  1888,  Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.    1-40. 
Garnett,   R.,    "Life  of  Thomas  Carlyle"   (Great  Writers).      London, 

1887,  W.  Scott. 
Froude,  J.   A.,    "Life  of  Thomas  Carlyle  in  London."     New  York, 

1884,  Scribner. 
Wylie,  W.    H.,  "  Carlyle,  the  Man  and  His   Books."     London,  1881, 

Marshall  &  Co. 
Mazzini,    J.,  "Life   and   Writings   of   Mazzini."      London,    1887,  W. 

Scott,  109-176. 

Tyndall,  J.,  "New  Fragments."    New  York,  1881,  Appleton,  347-392. 
Hood,  E.  P.,  "  Thomas  Carlyle  as  a  Philosophical  Thinker."     London, 

1875,  J.  Clark  &  Co. 
Greg,    W.    R.,    "Literary  and   Social    Judgments."       Boston,     1873, 

Osgood,  115-145. 
Hutton,    L.,    "  Literary   Landmarks   of   London."     New  York,   1892, 

Harper,  38-40. 
Martineau,   J.,    "Essays   Philosophical  and  Theological."     New  York, 

1866,  Holt,  329-405. 


CARLYLE  531 

Martineau,  H.,  "Autobiography."     London,  1877,  Smith,  Elder  &  Co., 

i:   380-387. 

Collier,  W.  F. ,    "  History  of  English  Literature."     London,  1892,  Nel- 
son, 494-499. 
Walsh,  W.  S.,  "Pen  Pictures  of  Modern  Authors."     New  York,  1886, 

Putnam,  1-41. 
Carlyle,    T.,    "Reminiscences"   (Norton).     Froude,    New  York,   1881, 

Scribner. 

Conway,  M.  D.,  "Carlyle."     New  York,  1881,  Harper. 
Parton,  J.,    "Some  Noted  Princes,"   etc.     New  York,    1883,   Crowell, 

I73-J87. 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  "Essays  Toward  a  Critical  Method."     London,  1889, 

v.  index.  ^ 

Thoreau,  H.  D.,  "A  Yankee  in  Canada."     Boston,  1866,  Osgood,  211- 

247. 
Welsh,  A.   H.,   "The  Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago, 

1884,  Griggs,  455-470. 
Taine,    H.   A.,    "History  of  English   Literature."     New  York,  1875, 

Holt,  3 :   295-343. 
Henley,  W.  E.,    "Views  and  Reviews."     New  York,    1890,   Scribner, 

16. 
Russell,  A.  P.,  "Characteristics."     Boston,  1893,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  270-275. 
Jenks,  E.,  "Thomas  Carlyle  and  J.  S.  Mill."     London,  1888,  G.  Allen, 

1-104. 
Sheppard,  N.,   "Essays  of  George  Eliot."     New  York,  n.  d.,  Funk  & 

Wagnalls,  25-30. 
Procter,    B.    W.,    "An  Autobiographical    Fragment."     London,  1877, 

Bell,  163-167. 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893, 

Harper,  2:   30-31  and  53-54  and  101-102,  etc. 
Gibbins,  H.  de  B.,    "English  Social  Reformers."     London,  1892,  Me- 

thuen,  184-204. 

Dulcken,   H.   W.,  "Worthies  of  the  World."     New  York,  1882,  Put- 
nam, 321-336. 

Shepard,  R.  H.,  "  Bibliography  of  Carlyle. "    London,  1 88 1,  Eliot  Stock. 
The  Critic,  2  :   277  (Burroughs). 
The  Independent,  32:    109-110. 
The  Nation,   32:   291-292   (E.  L.  Godkin)  ;  32:   201-202    (J.  Bryce) ; 

32:    109-110  (A.  G.  Sedgwick). 
North  American  Review,  41  :  454-482  (A.  H.  Everett) ;   140:  9-21  (F. 

Harrison). 


532  CARLYLE 

Dublin  Rez'ievv,  5  :   349-376. 

The  New  Englandfr,  8  :   46-66  (Field). 

Westminster  Review,  57:   247-251  (George  Eliot). 

National  Review,  3:  483-4940.  Martineau) ;  16:  77-83  (P.  W.  Roose); 

4:  330-341  (A.  Austin). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  I  :    185-196  (Phillips) ;    12  :  497-504  (D.  A.  Masson) ; 

51:   560-564;   51:  320-330  (Burroughs);   51:   837-840;   55:  421- 

423- 

Prater's  Magazine,  72  :   778-810  ;    103  :   515-528  (A.  Lang). 

Contemporary  Review,  39  :  584-609  (E.  Simcox)  ;  60:  520-528  (Lecky) ; 
49 :  772-793  (Max  Miiller). 

Harper's  Magazine,  48  :   726-729  (J.  G.  Wilson). 

Scribner's  Magazine,  22 :  89-92  (Emerson) ;  22 :  92-106  (Saints- 
bury). 

North  British  Review,  40 :    1-40  (Masson). 

New  Review,  6 :  408-429  and  593-608. 

LittelFs  Living  Age,  163 :  629-635  (A.  Austin  in  Xational  Review) ; 
148:  692-703  (J.  Macdowell  in  London  Times). 

Gentlemen's  Magazine,  30 :   530-533  (H.  R.  F.  Bourne). 

Scottish  Review,  I  :   72-100. 

Fortnightly  Review,  39  :  622-642  (Venables)  ;   53  :    5-32  (J.  Tyndall). 

Athenaum,  2  ('84) :   524-526;  I  ('95):    149-251  (J.  N.  Hoarr). 

Chambers 's  Journal,  57  :   663-666. 

Eclectic  Magazine,  199-206  (P.  Frank);    118:   326-398  (C.  G.  Duffey). 

Quarterly  Review,  132  :  335-366. 

Good  Words,  22  :  477-480  (D.  Macleod). 

Nineteenth  Century,  10:  1-4  (J.  A.  Froude)  ;  9  :  856-879  (E.  Dowden) ; 
9 :  1009-1025  (H.  Taylor) ;  32  :  470-486  (J.  Strachey). 

Macmillan's  Magazine,  43  :  482-496  (Mrs.  Oliphant) ;  47:  2OO-2I2  (J. 
C.  Morrison). 

Corn  hill  Magazine,  44:  664-683  (Leslie  Stephen). 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  159:  31-38. 


PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

i.  Free  Coinage — Verbal  Eccentricities.  —  "His 
felicity  and  power  of  expression  surpass  even  his  special  merit 
as  historian  and  critic.  Therein  his  experience  has  not  failed 
him,  but  furnished  him  with  such  a  store  of  winged,  ay,  and 
legged  words,  as  only  a  London  life  perchance  could  give 


CARLYLE  533 

account  of.  We  had  not  understood  the  wealth  of  the  lan- 
guage before.  Nature  is  ransacked,  and  all  the  resorts  and 
purlieus  of  humanity  are  taxed  to  furnish  the  fittest  symbol 
for  his  thought.  He  does  not  go  to  the  dictionary,  the  word- 
book, but  to  the  word-manufactory  itself,  and  has  made  end- 
less work  for  the  lexicographers." — H.  D.  Thoreau. 

"  One  peculiarity  of  Carlyle's  style  deserves  notice — his 
revival  of  many  of  the  old  Saxon  words,  for  none  of  the  semi- 
French  and  semi-Latin  words  imported  of  late  so  strike  upon 
an  Englishman's  heart  and  feelings  as  the  good  old  Saxon  : 
they  sound  home-like,  not  like  the  frippered  follies  of  modern 
times,  but  like  the  earnest,  hearty  days  of  our  fathers  under 
the  best  development.  ...  In  one  respect  I  think  Car- 
lyle  has  improved  the  English  language,  and  that  is  in  the 
use  he  makes  of  words  banded  and  coupled  together  as  epi- 
thets. .  .  .  Compound  words  are  too  few  in  the  old 
language  of  England  ;  the  old  Saxon  tongue  did  not  rejoice 
in  long  words,  but  stood  rather  in  awe  of  them ;  but  we  now 
need  compound  words  in  order  to  avoid  that  diluted  style 
which  the  writings  of  the  last  half-century  have  supplied — 
something  by  which  our  thoughts  may  be  more  compressed, 
masculine,  and  energetic — and  this  Carlyle  has  done  in  some 
of  the  singularly  beautiful  epithets  which  he  has  strung  to- 
gether in  these  compound  words,  in  which  the  Greeks  and 
Germans  were  thought  to  have  the  pre-eminence,  but  which 
he  has  demonstrated  the  English  language  is  quite  as  capable 
of  showing,  and  being  rightly  used  under,  as  either  of  those 
tongues." — George  Dawson. 

11  In  point  of  fact,  however,  Carlyle  takes  no  liberty  with 
the  English  language  for  which  he  cannot  plead  the  example 
of  Shakespeare.  When  he  wants  to  express  a  shade  of  mean- 
ing for  which  there  is  no  word  in  the  dictionary,  he  makes  a 
term  by  tacking  one  or  two  words  together.  He  speaks  [in 
4  Sartor  Resartus  ']  of  a  '  snow  -  and  -  rose  -  bloom  maiden  ' 
.  .  .  Carlyle  makes  these  words  as  Turner  mixed  colors, 


534  CARLYLE 

to  suit  his  own  pictorial  wants.  Shakespeare  did  the  same." 
— Peter  Bayne. 

"  He  is  most  liberal  in  the  coinage  of  new  words  and  even 
new  forms  of  syntax.  ...  To  give  an  adequate  view  of 
his  verbal  eccentricities  would  be  no  small  labor.  He  ex- 
tends the  admitted  licenses  of  the  language  in  every  direction, 
using  one  part  of  speech  for  another,  verbs  for  nouns,  nouns 
for  verbs,  adverbs  and  adjectives  for  nouns.  His  coinages 
often  take  the  form  of  new  derivatives—'  benthamee,'  '  amusee. ' 
He  abuses  the  license  of  giving  plurals  to  abstract  nouns." 
— Minto. 

"  Both  [Carlyle  and  Jean  Paul  Richter]  constantly  use 
words  sanctioned  by  no  custom,  or  even  precedent,  and,  of 
course,  though  often  expressive,  sometimes  not  compensating 
for  their  oddness  by  any  special  felicity." — John  Sterling. 

"  Hardly  any  writer  at  any  time  has  seen  during  his  own 
life  so  many  new  forms  of  speech,  invented  by  himself,  pass 
into  the  general  dictionary  of  phrase." — Saintsbury. 

"  Carlyle's  vocabulary  is  made  up  of  long  compounds  in 
the  German  style,  of  unusual  forms,  of  comparatives  and 
superlatives  of  his  own  invention." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  If  he  wants  to  convey  a  shade  of  meaning  for  which  only 
an  approximate  word  exists,  and  he  is  not  satisfied  with  a 
paraphrase,  he  must  alter  the  old  word  or  invent  a  new  one." 
—  W.  E.  Henley. 

"  That  new  grandiose  yet  rugged  voice  which  broke  every 
law  of  composition  and  triumphed  over  them  all,  which 
shocked  and  bewildered  all  critics  and  authorities,  yet  ex- 
cited and  stirred  the  whole  slumbrous  world  of  literature  and 
rang  into  the  air  like  a  trumpet." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  All  was  done  for  me  that  human  waiterage,  in  the  circum- 
stances, could  do.  ...  A  very  unbeautiful,  old,  boiled-look« 
ing,  foreign  dignitary,  married  to  somebody's  sister,  .  .  . 


CARLYLfi  535 

half-pay-sergeant-looking  figure  is  talking  insipidities  about  the 
news  from  the  papers." — Irish  Journey. 

"  No  penny-a-week  Committee  Lady,  no  manager  of  Soup- 
Kitchens,  dancer  at  Charity  Balls,  was  this  rugged,  stern-visaged 
man  ;  but  where  in  all  England  could  there  have  been  found 
another  soul  so  full  of  pity,  a  hand  so  heavenlike-bounteous  as 
his  ?  " — Boswelts  Life  of  Johnson. 

"  Accordingly,  the  impotent,  insolent  Do-nothingism  in  Prac- 
tice and  say-nothingism  in  Speech,  which  we  have  to  witness  on 
that  side  of  our  affairs,  is  altogether  amazing." — Gospel  of  Dilet- 
tanteism. 

2.  Profuse  Imagery. — "  First,  revelling  in  his  immense 
force  of  comparison  and  assimilation,  he  shows  a  prodigious 
luxuriance  of  the  figures  of  similarity — nicknaming  personages, 
applying  old  terms  to  new  situations,  and  such  like.  He  often 
substitutes  metaphorical  for  the  real  names  when  the  real  are 
quite  sufficient  and  perhaps  more  suitable  for  the  occasion. 
Now  this  habit,  not  to  speak  of  its  lowering  the  value  and 
freshness  of  his  genius  by  overdoing  and  overaffecting  orig- 
inality of  phrase,  often  makes  it  appear  as  if  he  did  not  know 
the  literal  and  customary  names  of  things,  and  were  driven  to 
make  shift  with  these  allusive  names.  .  .  .  The  simili- 
tudes, forcibly  hunted  out  from  every  region  of  his  knowledge 
of  nature  and  of  books,  are  not  merely  fanciful  embellishments 
— most  of  them  go  to  the  making  of  his  vivid  powers  of  de- 
scription. The  character  or  the  personal  appearance  or  action 
of  an  individual  ;  the  character  of  a  nation,  a  state  of  society, 
a  political  situation  ;  the  relative  position  of  two  belligerents — 
everything,  in  short,  that  needs  describing  he  brings  vividly 
before  us  in  its  leading  features  by  some  significant  simile  or 
metaphor. ' '  — Minto. 

''He  cannot  be  contented  with  a  single  expression;  he 
employs  figures  at  every  step ;  he  embodies  all  his  ideas ;  he 
must  touch  forms.  We  see  that  he  is  besieged  and  haunted  by 
brilliant  or  gloomy  visions  ;  every  thought  with  him  is  a  shock  ; 


556  CARLYLE 

a  stream  of  misty  passion  comes  bubbling  into  his  overflowing 
brain,  and  the  torrent  of  images  breaks  forth  and  rolls  on 
amidst  every  kind  of  mud  and  magnificence." — Taine. 

"  In  his  graphic  description  of  Richter's  style,  Carlyle  de- 
scribes his  own  pretty  nearly  ;  and  no  doubt  he  first  got  his 
tongue  loosened  at  that  fountain  and  was  inspired  by  it  to 
equal  freedom  and  originality.  '  The  language,'  as  he  says  of 
'Richter,  '  groans  with  indescribable  metaphors  and  allusions 
to  all  things  human  and  divine,  flowing  onward,  not  like  a 
river,  but  like  an  inundation  ;  circling  in  complete  eddies  ; 
chafing  and  gurgling,  now  this  way,  now  that ;  '  but  in  Car- 
lyle '  the  proper  current '  never  '  sinks  out  of  sight  amid  the 
boundless  roar. '  ' '  — H.  D.  Thoreau. 

"  In  reading  Jean  Paul  it  is  impossible,  I  think,  not  to  think 
that  the  color  is  sometimes  more  important  than  the  meaning, 
the  embroidery  more  precious  than  the  stuff ;  but  the  intel- 
lectual power  of  Carlyle  is  great  enough  to  cause  his  most 
glowing  similitudes  to  thrill  with  life.  In  describing  the  lan- 
guage of  those  books  you  are  forced  to  fall  back  upon  the 
author's  resource  of  metaphor  and  to  say  that  it  is  now  like 
the  gleaming  of  swords,  now  like  the  rustle  and  glance  of 
jewelled  garments,  now  terrible  as  lightning,  now  tender  as 
the  dew,  now  firm,  close,  rapid  as  the  tread  of  armed  men, 
now  wildly  and  grandly  vague  as  the  voice  of  forests  or  the 
moaning  of  the  sea." — Peter  Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  That  waste  chaos  of  authorship  by  trade  ;  that  waste  chaos 
of  skepticism  in  religion  and  politics,  in  life  theory  and  life  prac- 
tice ;  in  his  poverty,  in  his  dust  and  dimness,  with  the  sick  body 
and  the  rusty  coat ;  he  made  it  do  for  him,  like  a  brave  man. 
Not  wholly  without  a  loadstar  as  the  brave  all  need  to  have  ;  with 
his  eye  set  on  that,  he  would  change  his  course  for  nothing  in 
these  confused  vortices  of  the  lower  sea  of  time." — Heroes  and 
Hero  Worship. 


CARLYLE  537 

"  Virtue  once  promised  to  be  her  own  reward;  but  because 
she  does  not  pay  him  in  the  current  coin  of  worldly  enjoyment, 
he  reckons  her,  too,  a  delusion  ;  and,  like  Brutus,  reproaches  as 
a  shadow  what  he  once  worshipped  as  a  substance.  Whither 
shall  he  now  tend  ?  For  his  loadstars  have  gone  out  one  by  one  ; 
and  as  the  darkness  fell,  the  strong  steady  wind  has  changed  into 
a  fierce  and  aimless  tornado." — Essay  on  Goethe. 

"  Dreariest  continent  of  shot-rubbish  the  eye  ever  saw.  Con- 
fusion piled  on  confusion  to  your  utmost  horizon's  edge  ;  obscure 
in  illusive  twilight  as  of  the  shadow  of  death ;  trackless,  without 
index,  without  finger-post  or  mark  of  any  human  fore-goer  ; 
where  your  human  footstep,  if  you  are  still  human,  echoes  bode- 
ful through  the  gaunt  solitude,  peopled  only  by  somnambulent 
Pedants,  Dilettants,  and  doleful  creatures,  by  Phantasms,  errors, 
inconceivabilities,  by  nightmares,  pasteboard  novroys,  griffins, 
wiverns,  and  chimeras  dire.  There,  all  vanquished,  overwhelmed 
under  such  waste  lumber-mountains,  the  wreck  and  dead  ashes 
of  some  six  unbelieving  generations,  does  the  age  of  Cromwell 
and  his  Puritans  lie  hidden  from  us." — Essay  on  Cromwell. 

"  These  fringes  of  lamplight,  struggling  up  through  smoke  and 
thousand-fold  exhalation,  some  fathoms  into  the  ancient  reign  of 
Night,  what  thinks  Bootes  of  them,  as  he  leads  his  Hunting-Dogs 
over  the  Zenith  in  their  leash  of  sidereal  fire  ?  That  stifled  hum 
of  Mid-night,  when  Traffic  has  lain  down  to  rest ;  and  the  chariot- 
wheels  of  Vanity,  still  rolling  here  and  there  through  distant 
streets,  and  bearing  her  to  Halls  roofed  in  and  lighted  to  the  due 
pitch  for  her ;  and  only  Vice  and  Misery  to  prowl  or  to  moan 
like  night-birds  are  abroad  :  that  hum,  I  say,  like  the  ster- 
torous, unquiet  slumber  of  sick  Life,  is  heard  in  Heaven." — 
Essay  on  Burns. 


3.  Excessive  Ridicule  —  Broad  Sarcasm.  — "No 

man  ever  poured  out  such  withering  scorn  upon  his  contem- 
poraries. Many  of  his  political  tracts  are  as  blasting  as  the 
'  Satires  '  of  Juvenal.  The  opinions  and  practices  of  his  times 
in  politics,  religion,  and  literature  were  as  a  stubbly,  brambly 
field,  to  which  he  would  fain  apply  the  match  and  clean  the 
ground  for  a  nobler  crop.  .  .  .  He  was  probably  the 


538  CAfcLYLE 

most  savage  and  contemptuous  man  in  the  world  in  his  time, 
who  had  anything  like  his  enormous  fund  of  tenderness  and 
magnanimity. '  '—John  Burroughs. 

"  '  The  Latter- Day  Pamphlets  '  assailed  with  the  most  gall- 
ing invective  and  contemptuous  ridicule  the  leading  poli- 
ticians and  institutions  of  the  country.  The  hollowness  of 
great  men  and  the  servility  of  small  are  lashed  with  a  furious, 
stinging  whip,  whose  thongs,  steeped  in  the  salt  of  grim,  fan- 
tastic wit,  cut  and  smart  to  the  very  bone.  Yet  many  blows 
are  too  fierce,  too  sweeping,  and  many  fall  harmless  upon 
sound  and  honest  things." — IV.  F,  Collier. 

' '  This  firm,  victorious,  scoffing  vituperation  strikes  them 
with  chill  and  hesitation.  His  talks  often  remind  you  of 
what  was  said  of  Johnson  :  '  If  his  pistol  missed  fire,  he  would 
knock  you  down  with  the  butt-end.'  " — Emerson. 

"  Never  was  there  a  more  striking  example  of  that  ingenium 
fervidum  long  ago  said  to  be  a  characteristic  of  his  country- 
men. His  is  one  of  the  natures,  rare  for  these  latter  centuries, 
capable  of  rising  to  a  white  heat;  but  once  fairly  kindled,  he 
is  like  a  three-decker  on  fire,  and  his  shotted  guns  go  off,  as 
the  glow  reaches  them,  alike  dangerous  to  friend  and  foe." 
— Lowell. 

"  There  is,  then,  a  true  and  most  pregnant,  nay,  a  humane 
meaning  in  the  constant  flayings  and  extirpations  to  which  the 
merely  logical  man  is  subjected  by  Mr.  Carlyle.  But  his 
treatment  is  so  hard  that  any  bowels  of  compassion  not  un- 
naturally and  dangerously  indurated  must  yearn  toward  the 
sufferer  thus  dissected  alive.  While  the  operator,  moreover, 
grins  during  the  process  with  a  disdainful  glee  harder  to  be 
borne  than  much  anatomy." — -John  Sterling. 

"  Nothing  restrains  him  ;  not  even  the  so-called  proprieties 
of  history.  He  may,  after  his  boisterous  fashion,  pour  scorn 
upon  you  for  looking  grave  as  you  read  in  his  vivid  pages  of 
the  reckless  manner  in  which  too  many  of  his  heroes  drove 
coaches-and-six  through  the  Ten  Commandments.  As  likely 


CARLYLE  539 

as  not  he  will  call  you  a  blockhead  and  tell  you  to  close  your 
wide  mouth  and  cease  shrieking." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"It  is  to  Goethe,  too  much  revered  by  Mr.  Carlyle,  that 
we  owe  this  tinge  of  irony  which  in  this  book  ['  The  French 
Revolution  ']  often  supervenes — .  .  .  .  those  traits  of 
mockery — .  .  .  .  above  all,  that  disposition  to  crush 
man  by  contrasting  him  with  the  Infinite." — Mazzini. 

"  But  it  [the  humor  in  '  The  French  Revolution ']  is  dif- 
ficult to  describe — in  fact,  it  is  indescribable  to  anyone  who 
has  not  become  acquainted  with  it  in  the  book  itself.  To 
some  it  may  seem  altogether  offensive  to  associate  any  kind 
of  mirth  with  such  a  subject ;  but  I  confess  that  the  mood  of 
scornful  pity,  of  half-sneering  sympathy,  of  admiration  dashed 
with  derision  and  gravity  varied  with  peals  of  laughter  in 
which  the  fearful  tale  is  told,  has  sometimes  struck  me  as  scarce- 
ly human." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  The  deep  scorn  which  he  poured  upon  the  whole  machin- 
ery of  modern  politics,  the  loathing  with  which  he  looked 
upon  the  great  national  Palaver,  the  contempt  which  he  felt 
for  the  modern  conception  of  liberty  as  a  barricade  against 
most  needful  and  necessary  government — all  prevented  him 
from  offering  any  but  the  wildest  and  most  impracticable  sug- 
gestions to  practical  statesmen." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Strip  your  Louis  Quatorze  of  his  king-gear,  and  there  is  left 
nothing  but  a  poor  forked  radish  with  a  head  fantastically 
carved." — Heroes  and  Hero  Worship. 

"  And  now  observe  to  what  bewildering  obscurations  and  im- 
pediments all  this  as  yet  stands  entangled,  and  is  yet  intelligible 
to  no  man.  How,  with  our  gross  Atheism,  we  hear  it  not  to  be 
the  voice  of  God  to  us,  but  regard  it  merely  as  a  voice  of  earthly 
Profit-and-Loss.  And  have  a  Hell  in  England— the  Hell  of 
making  money.  And  coldly  see  the  all-conquering  Sons  of  Toil 
sit  enchanted  by  the  million,  in  their  Poor-Law  Bastile,  as  if  this 
were  nature's  law ; — mumbling  to  ourselves  some  vague  jangle- 


540  CARLYLE 

ment  of  Laissez-faire,  Supply-and-Demand,  Cash-payment  the 
one  nexus  of  man  to  man  ;  Free-trade,  Competition,  and  Devil 
take  the  hind-most,  our  latest  Gospel  yet  preached  !  " — Past  and 
Present. 

"  Nay,  our  very  Biographies,  how  stiff-starched,  foisonless,  hol- 
low !  They  stand  there  respectable  ;  and — what  more  ?  Dumb 
idols ;  with  a  skin  of  delusively  painted  wax-work  ;  inwardly 
empty,  or  full  of  rags  and  bran.  In  our  England  especially, 
which  in  these  days  is  become  the  chosen  land  of  respectability, 
Life-writing  has  dwindled  to  the  sorrowfullest  condition ;  it  re- 
quires a  man  to  be  some  disrespectable,  ridiculous  Boswell,etc." 
—  The  Diamond  Necklace. 

"  They  [the  Americans]  have  begotten,  with  a  rapidity  beyond 
recorded  example,  Eighteen  Millions  of  the  greatest  bores  ever 
seen  in  this  world." — Past  and  Present. 


4.  Contemptuous     Familiarity  —  Nicknames.  — 

"  Carlyle  had  a  narrow  escape  from  being  the  most  formi- 
dable blackguard  the  world  has  ever  seen ;  was,  indeed,  in 
certain  moods,  a  kind  of  divine  blackguard — a  purged  and 
pious  Rabelais,  who  could  bespatter  the  devil  with  more  tell- 
ing epithets  than  any  other  man  who  ever  lived.  What  a 
tongue  !  What  a  vocabulary  !  He  fairly  oxidizes,  bums  up 
the  object  of  his  opprobrium  in  the  stream  of  caustic  epithets 
he  turns  upon  it." — -John  Burrmighs. 

"But  he  is  wilfully  and  pertinaciously  unjust ;  even  scur- 
rilous, impolite,  ungentlemanly ;  calls  us  'imbeciles,'  'dilet- 
tantes,' '  Philistines,'  implying  sometimes  what  would  not 
sound  well  expressed." — H.  D.  Thoreau. 

"  I  am  quite  sure  that  your  fine  taste  will  be  repelled  by  the 
horrible  coarseness  of  some  of  his  nicknames  in  the  Cromwell 
book."—  Mary  Russell  Mitford. 

"  He  rejoices  in  odd  phrases,  in  recurring  epithets,  in  nick- 
names, in  catchwords." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"As  for  King  Thomas,  the  last  of  the  monological  succes- 
sion, he  made  such  a  piece  of  work  with  his  prophecies  and 


CARLYLE  541 

sarcasms  about  our  little  trouble  with  some  of  the  Southern 
States  that  we  came  rather  to  pity  him  for  his  whim  and 
crochets  than  to  get  angry  with  him  for  calling  us  bores  and 
other  unamiable  names." — O.  W.  Holmes. 

"  He  writes  biography  like  a  showman.  He  stands  in  front 
of  his  heroes,  as  it  were,  with  a  long  stick,  pointing  out  their 
peculiarities  with  a  grin  and  describing  them  in  the  well- 
known  language  of  the  van.  His  mere  diction  outweighs  in 
impertinence  whatever  it  may  win  in  power." — T.  E.  Kebbel. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  One  word,  in  spite  of  our  haste,  must  be  granted  to  poor 
Bozzy.  He  passes  for  a  mean,  inflated,  gluttonous  creature  ;  and 
was  so  in  many  senses.  Yet  the  fact  of  his  reverence  for  Johnson 
will  ever  remain  noteworthy." — Heroes  and  Hero  Worship. 

"  O  Heavyside  !  my  solid  friend,  this  is  the  sorrow  of  sorrows  : 
what  on  earth  can  become  of  us  till  this  accursed  enchantment, 
the  general  summary  and  consecration  of  delusions,  be  cast  forth 
from  the  heart  and  life  of  one  and  all  ?  " — The  Present  Time. 

"  Rowland  of  Roncesvalles,  too,  we  see  well  in  thinking  of  it, 
found  rainy  weather  as  well  as  sunny  ;  knew  what  it  was  to  have 
hose  need  darning  ;  got  tough  beef  to  chew,  or  even  went  dinner- 
less  ;  was  saddle-sick,  calumniated  ;  .  .  .  and  oftenest  felt, 
I  doubt  not,  that  this  was  a  very  Devil's  world,  and  he,  Rowland 
himself,  one  of  the  sorriest  caitiffs  there." — The  Diamond  Neck- 
lace. 

"  Plutus,  the  blustering  giant,  collapses  at  Virgil's  rebuke  ;  it  is 
as  the  sails  sink,  the  mast  being  suddenly  broken,  or  that  poor 
Sordello,  with  the  cotto  aspetto  face  baked  parched  brown  and 
lean." — Heroes  and  Hero  Worship. 

5.  Minute  Characterization— Individualization.— 

"  He  sees  history,  as  it  were,  by  flashes  of  lightning.  A  single 
scene,  whether  a  landscape  or  an  interior,  a  single  figure  in  a 
wild  mob  of  men,  whatever  may  be  snatched  by  the  eye  in  that 
instant  of  intense  illumination,  is  minutely  photographed  upon 
the  memory.  Every  tree  and  stone,  almost  every  blade  of 


542  CARLYLE 

grass,  every  article  of  furniture  in  a  room,  the  attitude  or  ex- 
pression, nay,  the  very  buttons  and  shoe-strings  of  a  principal 
figure,  the  gestures  of  momentary  passion  in  a  wild  throng — 
everything  leaps  into  vision  under  that  glare  with  a  painful 
distinctness  that  leaves  the  retina  quivering.  The  intervals 
are  absolute  darkness.  Mr.  Carlyle  makes  us  acquainted  with 
the  isolated  spot  where  we  happen  to  be  when  the  flash  comes, 
as  if  by  actual  eyesight,  but  there  is  no  possibility  of  a  com- 
prehensive view.  No  other  writer  compares  with  him  for 
vividness.  He  is  himself  a  witness,  and  makes  us  witnesses 
of  whatever  he  describes." — Lowell. 

"  Thomas  Carlyle  had  a  wonderful  power  of  sketching,  in  a 
few  words,  physical  and  mental  portraits  of  the  men  he  met. 
.  .  .  Every  peculiarity  of  face,  feature,  shape  of  the  head, 
color  of  the  hair,  movement  of  the  body,  or  any  other  merely 
physical  characteristic,  was  made  significant  of  mental  or 
moral  qualities  in  the  person  delineated." — E.  P.  }Vhipple. 

"  Carlyle  created  nothing ;  but  with  a  real  subject  before 
him  he  was  the  greatest  of  historical  painters.  He  took  all  the 
pains  first  to  obtain  an  authentic  account  of  the  facts.  Then, 
with  a  few  sharp  lines,  he  could  describe  face,  figure,  charac- 
ter, action,  with  a  complete  insight  never  rivalled  except  by 
Tacitus  and  with  a  certain  sympathy,  a  perennial  flashing  of 
humour,  of  which  Tacitus  has  none.  He  produces  a  gallery 
of  human  portraits  each  so  distinctly  drawn  that,  whenever 
studied,  it  could  never  be  forgotten." — -J.  A.  Froude. 

"  But  when  he  got  hold  of  '  a  man  '  in  history,  it  seems  to 
me  that  it  was  absolutely  impossible  for  him  to  miss  hitting 
off  that  man  to  the  life.  And  he  could  in  the  same  way  seize 
a  period,  a  movement,  a  set  of  incidents,  with  a  grasp  of  which 
I  am  sure  it  is  enough  and  I  do  not  think  it  is  too  much  to 
say  that  the  result  was  Gibbon's  without  his  obstinate  super- 
ficiality and  Thucydides's  without  his  disappointing  asceticism 
in  rhetoric  and  eloquence." — Saintsbury. 

"I  think  you  see  as  pictures  every  street,  church,  parlia- 


CARLYLE  543 

ment  house,  barrack,  baker's  shop,  mutton-stall,  forge,  wharf, 
and  ship,  and  whatever  stands,  creeps,  rolls,  or  swims  there- 
about, and.make  all  your  own.  Hence  your  encyclopediacal 
allusions  to  all  knowables  and  the  virtues  and  vices  of  your 
panoramic  pages.  Well,  it  is  your  own,  and  it  is  English  ; 
and  every  word  stands  for  somewhat ;  and  it  cheers  and  forti- 
fies me." — Emerson  to  Carlyle. 

"No  one  at  all  acquainted  with  his  writings  can  fail  to 
remember  his  almost  excessive  love  of  detail;  his  lively  taste 
for  facts  simply  as  facts.  Imaginary  sorrows  may  extort  from 
him  nothing  but  grunts  and  snorts  ;  but  let  him  only  worry 
out  for  himself,  from  that  great  dust-heap  called  'history,' 
some  undoubted  fact  of  human  and  tender  interest,  and,  how- 
ever small  it  may  be,  relating  possibly  to  someone  hardly 
known,  and  playing  but  a  small  part  in  the  events  he  is  re- 
cording, and  he  will  wax  amazingly  sentimental  and  perhaps 
shed  as  many  real  tears  as  Sterne  or  Dickens  do  sham  ones 
over  their  figments.  This  realism  of  Carlyle's  gives  a  great 
charm  to  his  histories  and  biographies.  The  amount  he  tells 
you  is  something  astonishing — no  platitudes,  no  rigmarole, 
no  common  form  (articles  which  are  the  staple  of  most  biog- 
raphies), but,  instead  of  them,  all  the  facts  and  features  of  the 
case — pedigree,  birth,  father  and  mother,  brothers  and  sisters, 
education,  physiognomy,  personal  habits,  dress,  mode  of 
speech  ;  nothing  escapes  him." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  In  the  chapter  [in  '  The  French  Revolution  ']  in  which 
the  States-general  defile  before  the  eyes  of  the  reader,  the  per- 
sonal appearance  and  the  most  prominent  characteristics  of 
the  leading  men  are  presented  with  a  graphic  force  with  which 
there  is  nothing  in  Gibbon,  in  Clarendon,  or  in  Macaulay 
that  can  be  compared." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  In  Carlyle's  power  of  description  lies  one  of  his  most  in- 
disputable claims  to  high  literary  rank.  .  .  .  As  a  rule, 
he  is  satisfied  with  a  few  suggestive  strokes;  but  occasionally 
he  fills  in  a  picture.  When  he  does  so,  he  gives  the  general 


544  CARLYLE 

view  first,  and  then  tells  of  particular  after  particular,  delib- 
erately, and  with  some  similitude  or  collateral  circumstance  to 
fix  each  particular  distinctly  in  the  mind." — Minto. 

"  Everything  of  a  nature  to  strike  vividly  on  the  senses  has 
been  seized  by  him,  and  he  has  handed  down  the  image  to 
•his  readers." — Mazzini. 

"  He  is  a  masterly  clerk,  scribe,  reporter,  writer.  He  can 
reduce  to  writing  most  things — gestures,  winks,  nods,  signifi- 
cant looks,  patois,  brogue,  accent,  pantomime;  and  how  much, 
passed  for  silence  before,  does  he  represent  by  written  words." 
— H.  D.  Thorcau. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Sitting  in  his  stall ;  working  on  tanned  hides,  amid  pincers, 
paste,  horns,  rosin,  swine-bristles,  and  a  nameless  flood  of  rub- 
bish, this  youth  [George  Fox]  had  nevertheless  a  Living  Spirit  be- 
longing to  him  ;  also  an  antique  Inspired  Volume,  through  which, 
as  through  a  window,  it  could  look  upwards  and  discern  its  celes- 
tial Home.  The  task  of  a  daily  pair  of  shoes,  coupled  even  with 
some  prospect  of  victuals  and  an  honorable  Mastership  in  Cord- 
wainery,  and  perhaps  the  post  of  Thirdborough  in  his  hundred, 
as  the  crown  of  long,  faithful  sewing — was  no-wise  satisfaction 
enough  to  such  a  mind." — Sartor  Resartus. 

"  The  very  boys  deftly  wrench  the  matches  out  of  fallen  bombs  : 
a  man  clutches  a  rolling  ball  with  his  hat,  which  takes  fire ; 
when  cool,  they  crown  it  with  a  '  bonnet  rouge?  Memorable,  also, 
be  that  nimble  Barber,  who,  when  the  bomb  burst  beside  him, 
snatched  up  a  shred  of  it,  introduced  soap  and  lather  into  it,  cry- 
ing :  '  Voila  monplath  barbe  !  My  new  shaving  dish ! '  and  shaved 
'  fourteen  people'  on  the  spot." — The  French  Revolution. 

"  And  so  now  bursts  forth  that  effulgence  of  Parisian  enthusi- 
asm, good-heartedness,  and  brotherly  love  ;  such,  if  Chroniclers 
are  trustworthy,  as  was  not  witnessed  since  the  Age  of  Gold. 
Paris,  male  and  female,  precipitates  itself  towards  its  South- 
west extremity,  spade  on  shoulder.  Streams  of  men,  without 
order,  or  in  order,  as  ranked  fellow-craftsmen,  as  natural  or 
accidental  reunions,  march  towards  the  Field  of  Mars.  Three- 
deep  these  march  ;  to  the  sound  of  stringed  music  ;  preceded  by 


CARLYLE  545 

young  girls  with  green  boughs  and  tri-color  streamers  ;  they  have 
shouldered,  soldier-wise,  their  shovels  and  picks,  and  with  one 
throat  are  singing  faird.  Yes,  '  pardieu,  fa  ira,'  cry  the  passen- 
gers on  the  streets.  All  corporate  Guilds  and  public  and  private 
Bodies  of  Citizens,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  march  ;  the 
very  Hawkers,  one  finds,  have  ceased  bawling  for  one  day.  The 
neighboring  Villages  turn  out ;  their  able  men  come  marching, 
to  village  fiddle  or  tambourine  and  triangle,  under  their  Mayor 
or  Mayor  and  Curate,  who  also  walk  bespaded  and  in  tricolor 
sash." — The  French  Revolution. 

6.  Extravagant   Humor — Absurd  Incongruity. — 

"  In  Carlyle's  wit  and  humour  there  are  many  peculiar  charac- 
teristics. His  wit  is  a  heavy,  thumping  kind,  like  the  batter- 
ing ram  of  old,  hammering  away  with  '  thunderlike  percussion  ' 
at  some  old  abuse  or  timeworn  institution.  He  reminds  us  of 
the  heathen  tradition  of  one  of  the  gods,  who  is  described  as 
'all  hands,  all  eyes,  all  feet,'  to  speak  out,  overtake,  and 
punish  falsehood  and  wrongs.  His  humour  is  often  of  such  a 
kind  as  makes  us  laugh  through  tears,  and  laughs  itself  in  its 
most  savage  words.  It  has  in  it  a  wild,  grim  fancy,  with 
something  of  the  fierce,  grotesque,  and  fiery  earnestness  of 
Hogarth,  with  the  free,  daring  caricature  of  Cruikshank.  A 
rough,  rugged,  vehement  spirit  is  in  him,  as  well  as  a  hearty 
humour,  which  ever  and  anon  breaks  out,  sporting  with  the 
foibles,  fancies,  and  manners  of  the  age." — 61.  Davey. 

"  Humorous  eccentricity  and  exaggeration  is  enjoyed,  and 
the  happy  turns  of  phrase  are  caught  up  and  remembered;  the 
vivid  pictures  of  actual  events  enrich  the  gallery  of  memory. ' ' 
— Saintsbury. 

"  Nowhere,  surely,  in  the  whole  field  of  English  literature, 
Shakespeare  excepted,  do  you  come  upon  a  more  abundant 
vein  of  humour  than  Carlyle's,  though  I  admit  that  the  quality 
of  the  ore  is  not  of  the  finest.  His  every  production  is  bathed 
in  humour.  This  must  never  be,  though  it  often  has  been, 
forgotten.  He  is  not  to  be  taken  literally.  He  is  always  a 
35 


CARLYLE 

humorist,  not  unfrequently  a  writer  of  burlesque,  and  occa- 
sionally a  buffoon.  .  .  .  Although  the  spectacle  of  Mr. 
Swinburne  taking  Carlyle  to  task,  as  he  recently  did,  for  in- 
delicacy, has  an  oddity  all  its  own,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned 
I  cannot  but  concur  with  this  critic  in  thinking  that  Carlyle 
has  laid  himself  open,  particularly  in  his  'Frederick,  the 
Great,'  to  the  charge  one  usually  associates  with  the  great  and 
terrible  name  of  Dean  Swift ;  but  it  js  the  Dean  with  a  differ- 
ence, and  the  difference  is  all  in  Carlyle' s  favor.  The  former 
deliberately  pelts  you  with  dirt,  as  did  in  the  olden  days  gen- 
tlemen electors  their  Parliamentary  candidates  ;  the  latter  only 
occasionally  splashes  you,  as  does  a  public  vehicle  pursuing  on 
a  wet  day  its  uproarious  course." — Augustine  Burn/I. 

"  There  is  nothing  deeper  in  his  constitution  than  his 
humor — than  the  condescending  good -nature  with  which  he 
looks  at  every  object  in  existence  as  a  man  might  look  at  a 
mouse." — Emerson. 

"  In  Mr.  Carlyle's  writings  humor  of  every  sort  abounds; 
he  is  a  great  idealist  and  a  great  humorist ;  the  spectacle  of 
startling  contradictions,  the  grotesque  exaggerations,  are  pre- 
sented side  by  side  in  too  grim  a  form  for  laughter,  and  yet 
there  is  a  dreadful  Rabelaisian  merriment." — E.  P.  Hood. 

"  In  the  works  in  which  he  appeared  as  a  humorist  and  a 
satirist — as  distinguished  from  his  loftiest  moods,  in  which  he 
appeared  as  a  thinker  and  a  seer — his  wit  and  humor  rushed 
by  instinct  into  forms  truly  Rabelaisian.  In  particular,  he 
cannot  help  letting  his  mind  run  riot  in  picturing  individuals." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  We  should  omit  a  main  attraction  in  these  books  if  we 
said  nothing  of  their  humor.  .  .  .  The  very  punctuation, 
the  italics,  the  quotation  marks,  the  blank  spaces  and  dashes, 
and  the  capitals,  each  and  all  are  pressed  into  its  service." 
— H.  D.  Thoreau. 


CARLYLE  547 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

' '  For  what  end  were  their  tithes  levied  and  eaten  ;  for  what 
were  their  shovel-hats  scooped  out  and  their  surplices  and  cas- 
sock-aprons girt-on  ;  and  such  a  church-repairing  and  chaffering 
and  organing  and  other  racketing  held  over  that  spot  of  God's 
Earth — if  Man  were  but  a  Patent  Digester  and  the  Belly  with  its 
adjuncts  the  grand  Reality  ?  " — Sartor  Resartus. 

"  The  old  Pope  of  Rome,  finding  it  laborious  to  kneel  so  long 
while  they  cart  him  through  the  streets  to  bless  the  people  on 
Corpus-Christi  Day,  complains  of  rheumatism:  whereupon  his 
Cardinals  consult ; — construct  him,  after  some  study,  a  stuffed 
cloaked  figure,  of  iron  and  wood,  with  wool  or  baked  hair  ;  and 
place  it  in  a  kneeling  posture.  Stuffed  figure,  or  rump  of  a 
figure  ;  to  this  stuffed  rump  he,  sitting  at  his  ease  on  a  lower 
level,  joins,  by  the  aid  of  cloaks  and  drapery,  his  living  head  and 
outspread  hands  ;  the  rump  with  its  cloaks  kneels,  the  Pope  looks, 
and  holds  his  hands  spread  ;  and  so  the  two  in  concert  bless  the 
Roman  population  on  Corpus-Christi  Day,  as  well  as  they  can." 
— Past  and  Present. 

"  Nay,  if  you  grant,  what  seems  to  me  admissible,  that  the 
Dandy  has  a  Thinking-principle  in  him,  and  some  notions  of 
Time  and  Space,  is  there  not  in  this  Life-devotedness  to  Cloth, 
in  this  so  willing  sacrifice  of  the  Immortal  to  the  Perishable, 
something  (though  in  reverse  order)  of  that  blending  and  iden- 
tification of  Eternity  with  Time,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  con- 
stitutes the  Prophetic  character  ?  " — Sartor  Resartus. 

7.  Rugged  Sincerity— Earnestness. — "  His  soul  is 

full  of  earnestness,  and  nearly  every  line  of  his  writings  bears 
the  strong  impress  of  his  spirit  and  the  stamp  of  '  I  believe  ' 
upon  it.  A  reverence  and  faith  in  that  which  is  true,  a  deep 
hatred  of  that  which  is  false,  a  belief  in  the  eternal  and  immu- 
table laws  of  God  in  the  world,  in  the  sovereign  right  of 
duty,  in  the  dignity  and  solemnity  of  human  life — these  are 
the  articles  of  his  faith,  which  he  ever  proclaims  with  new  and 
impressive  earnestness.  .  .  .  [He  speaks]  in  words  which, 


548  CARLYLE 

like  Luther's,  are  'half- battles,'  that  fly  off  sometimes  with  fiery 
sentences,  like  sparks  from  his  fierce,  glowing  soul,  as  he 
utters  his  indignant  protest  against  human  wrong  and  misery, 
against  cant  and  falsehood  and  the  vices  and  crimes  which 
dishonor  human  nature,  or  again  utters  his  prophetic  warnings 
and  denunciations  after  the  manner  of  the  old  Hebrew  seers. ' ' 
— S.  Davey. 

1 '  He  was  a  preacher  of  righteousness  to  his  generation  and 
a  rebuker  of  its  shams  and  irreverences,  and  as  such  he  cut 
deep,  cut  to  the  bone  and  to  the  marrow  of  the  bone.  That 
piercing,  agonized,  prophetic,  yet  withal  melodious  and  win- 
some voice,  how  it  rises  through  and  above  the  multitudinous 
hum  and  clatter  of  contemporary  voices  in  England,  and  alone 
falls  upon  the  ear  as  from  out  the  primal  depths  of  moral  con- 
viction and  power  !  Carlyle  always  takes  us  to  the 
source  of  intense  personal  and  original  conviction.  The 
spring  may  be  a  hot  spring,  or  a  sulphur  spring,  or  a  spouting 
spring — a  geyser,  as  Froude  says,  shooting  up  volumes  of 
steam  and  stone,  or  the  most  refreshing  and  delicious  of  foun- 
tains (and  he  sterns  to  have  been  these  things  alternately); 
but  in  any  case  it  was  an  original  source  and  came  from  out 
the  depths — at  times  from  out  the  Plutonic  depths. 
His  stress  and  heat  of  conviction  was  such  as  only  the  great 
world  reformers  have  been  possessed  of." — -John  Burroughs. 

"  Above  all,  I  would  note  the  sincerity  of  the  writer.  What 
he  writes  he  not  only  thinks  but  feels.  He  may  deceive  him- 
self— he  cannot  deceive  us ;  for  what  he  says,  even  when  it  is 
not  the  truth,  is  yet  true ;  his  individuality,  his  errors,  his  in- 
complete views  of  things — realities — the  truth,  limited,  I  might 
say,  for  error  springing  from  sincerity  in  a  high  intellect  is 
no  other  than  such.  .  .  .  He  writes  a  book  as  he  would 
do  a  good  action.  Yet  more,  not  only  does  he  feel  all  he 
writes,  but  he  writes  nearly  all  he  feels." — -J.  Mazzini. 

"  He  was,  indeed,  himself  a  literary  Cromwell,  waging 
sternest  war  with  all  the  force  of  an  earnest  soul  against  mod- 


CARLYLE  549 

ern  humbug,  untruth,  and  noisy  pretension.  No  wonder  that 
this  soldier  of  the  pen,  among  the  stanchest  of  our  century, 
looking  back  across  two  hundred  years  of  history,  should  have 
recognized  natural  royalty  in  the  crazy  brow,  solid  frame, 
and  iron  soul  of  a  Huntingdon  farmer,  who  could  lead  armies  to 
a  certain  triumph  and  dissolve  a  senate  with  the  stamping  of 
his  foot.  An  electric  sympathy  linked  the  two ;  true  man- 
hood sharpened  Cromwell's  sword  and  true  manhood  guided 
Carlyle's  pen."—  IV.  F.  Collier. 

"  His  guiding  genius  is  his  moral  sense,  his  perception  of 
the  sole  importance  of  truth  and  justice.  .  .  .  It  is  not  so 
much  that  Carlyle  cares  for  this  or  that  dogma  as  that  he  likes 
genuineness  (the  source  of  all  strength)  in  his  companions. 
Combined  with  this  warfare  on  respectability,  and 
indeed  pointing  all  his  satire,  is  the  severity  of  his  moral  senti- 
ment. In  proportion  to  the  peals  of  laughter  amid  which  he 
strips  the  plumes  of  a  pretender  and  shows  the  lean  hypocrisy 
to  every  advantage  of  ridicule,  does  he  worship  whatever  en- 
thusiasm, fortitude,  love,  or  other  sign  of  a  good  nature  is  in  a 
man . ' '  — Emerson. 

"  Further,  it  must  be  said  that,  true  as  is  his  devotion  to 
the  truth,  so  flaming  and  cordial  is  his  hatred  of  the  false,  in 
whatever  shapes  and  names  delusions  may  show  themselves. 
Affectations,  quackeries,  tricks,  frauds,  swindlings,  commer- 
cial or  literary,  baseless  speculations,  loud,  ear-catching  rhet- 
oric, melodramatic  sentiment,  moral  drawlings  and  hyper- 
boles, religious  cant,  clever  political  shifts,  and  conscious  or 
half-conscious  fallacies,  all  in  his  view  come  under  the  same 
hangman's  rubric — proceed  from  the  same  offal  heart." 
— -John  Sterling. 

"  Carlyle  preaches  the  dignity  of  labor,  the  necessity  of 
righteousness,  the  love  of  veracity,  the  hatred  of  shams — Mat- 
thew Arnold.  What  he  despised,  and  would  teach  others  to 
despise,  was  earth's  treasures,  pleasures,  fashions,  forms,  man- 
ners, shams,  cant,  and  all  oppression  and  wrong.  What 


550  CARLYLE 

he  loved  was  God  above  all  and  his  fellow-man,  pity  for  dis- 
tress, industry  in  work,  sacrifice  of  self,  honesty  of  purpose, 
truth  in  word  and.  deed,  purity  of  heart,  good  works  any- 
where and  everywhere." — A.  S.  Arnold. 

"  As  a  negative  teacher  he  has  few  equals.  '  Don't  funk ;' 
'don't  cant;'  'don't  gush]'  'don't  whine; '  '  don't  chatter' 
— these  and  some  others  like  them  were  his  commandments, 
and  I  do  not  know  where  to  look  for  a  better  set  of  this 
ki  nd . " — George  Saints  bury. 

"  He  is  singularly  serious  and  untrivial.  We  are  every- 
where impressed  by  the  rugged,  unwearied,  and  rich  sincerity 
of  the  man.  ...  He  has  the  earnestness  of  a  prophet. 
In  an  age  of  pedantry  and  dilettanteism,  he  has  no  grain  of 
these  in  his  composition." — H.  D.Thoreau. 

"  He  possessed,  besides,  another  quality,  the  rarest  of  all 
and  the  most  precious,  an  inflexible  love  of  truth.  It  was 
first  a  moral  principle  with  him,  but  he  had  also  an  intellectual 
curiosity  to  know  everything  exactly  as  it  was." — Froude. 

"He  was  [in  his  student  days]  without  influence,  friends, 
or  any  desire  to  make  them — a  rugged,  somewhat  repellant, 
defiant  young  man,  fearing  as  the  very  devil  himself  any  at- 
tempt at  patronage.  ...  In  his  uncompromising  indi- 
viduality, conciliating  nobody,  he  became  the  acknowledged 
head  and  most  prominent  figure  in  English  literature.  He 
considered  the  prejudices  of  no  one,  and  freely  gave  forth  his 
own  with  all  the  force  of  his  great  character  and  impassioned 
utterance.  .  ,  .  That  the  world  was  a  place  for  a  man  to 
make  his  way  in,  to  make  his  fortune,  to  attain  comfort  and 
reputation  by  steady  climbing,  catching  at  every  twig  to  help 
himself  up,  was  the  famous  gospel  of  respectability  which  Car- 
lyle  felt  himself  bound  to  trample  under  foot.  ...  In 
all  his  scorn  of  the  things  that  be,  in  all  his  wild  expositions 
of  '  that  stuff  that  dreams  are  made  of,'  and  in  all  his  indig- 
nant denunciations  of  sham  and  false  appearances,  he  held  fast 
to  the  great  central  idea  of  God  and  Providence — a  being  be- 


CARLYLE  551 

fore  whom  every  man  should  answer  for  his  deeds.  .  . 
Sometimes,  when  excited  by  the  sight  of  what  he  considered 
sham  religion,  he  was  wildly  and  contemptuously  profane ; 
often  when  moved  by  real  piety  and  devotion,  tenderly  rev- 
erent and  respectful.  ...  He  proved  to  many  the  pos- 
session of  a  heart  full  of  kindness  and  generosity." — Mrs. 
Oliphant. 

' '  He  hates  falsehood  and  laziness  and  puffery  ;  and  he  has 
little  or  no  respect  for  merely  rich  and  titled  people.     . 
He  does  not  utter  hymns  in  favor  of  prosperity  ;  his  advocacy 
is  reserved  for  the  humble,  the  slighted,  and  the  deceived,  for 
the  poor  who  have  no  friends." — T.  E.  Kebbel. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Nature's  laws,  I  must  repeat,  are  eternal :  her  still  small 
voice,  speaking  from  the  inmost  heart  of  us,  shall  not,  under  ter- 
rible penalties,  be  disregarded.  No  one  man  can  depart  from 
the  truth  without  damage  to  himself ;  no  one  million  of  men  ;  no 
twenty-seven  millions  of  men.  Show  me  a  nation  fallen  every- 
where into  this  course,  so  that  each  expects  it,  permits  it  to  others 
and  himself,  I  will  show  you  a  nation  travelling  with  one  assent 
on  the  broad  way." — Past  and  Present. 

"  Wholly  a  blessed  time  :  when  jargon  might  abate,  and  here 
and  there  some  genuine  speech  begin.  When  to  the  noble 
opened  heart,  as  to  such  heart  they  alone  do,  all  noble  things  be- 
gan to  grow  visible  ;  and  the  difference  between  just  and  unjust, 
between  true  and  false,  between  work  and  sham  work,  between 
speech  and  jargon,  was  once  more  what  to  our  happier  fathers  it 
used  to  be,  infinite — as  between  a  heavenly  thing  and  an  infernal: 
the  one  a  thing  which  you  were  not  to  do,  which  you  were  wise 
not  to  attempt  doing ;  which  it  were  better  for  you  to  have  a  mill- 
stone tied  around  your  neck  and  be  cast  into  the  sea  than  con- 
cern yourself  with  doing  !  Brothers,  it  will  not  be  a  Morrison's 
pill  or  remedial  measure  that  will  bring  all  this  about  for  us  ! " 
— Past  and  Present. 

"  Thou  there,  the  thing  for  thee  to  do  is,  if  possible,  to  cease 
to  be  a  hollow  sounding  shell  of  hearsays,  egoisms,  purblind  dil- 


552  CARLYLE 

ettanteism  :  and  become,  were  it  on  the  infinite  small  scale,  a 
faithful  discerning  soul.  Thou  shalt  descend  into  thy  inner  man 
and  see  if  there  be  any  traces  of  a  soul  there  ;  till  then  there  can 
be  nothing  done  !  O  brother,  we  must  if  possible  resuscitate 
some  soul  and  conscience  in  us ;  exchange  our  dilettanteism  for 
sincerities,  our  dead  hearts  of  stone  for  living  hearts  of  flesh." 
— Past  and  Present. 


8.  Chaotic  Sentence  Structure. — "  He  set  at  naught 
what  are  usually  called  the  models  of  English  composition — 
he  laid  under  contribution  the  most  diverse  and  outlandish 
sources  of  speech,  borrowing  now  something  from  his  native 
Annandale  idiom  and  vocabulary,  largely  from  German  sources 
(Jean  Paul  Richter  is  especially  named),  importing  not  only 
words  and  phrases,  but  whole  turns  of  language  hitherto 
unheard  in  English." — Principal  Shairp. 

"  He  often  flings  together  a  bundle  of  words  which,  upon 
cool  analysis,  we  find  a  mass  of  disjointed  notes — drives  at  full 
swing  through  all  school  notions  of  logical  and  grammatical 
arrangement,  scattering  right  and  left  into  ignominious  exile 
nominatives  and  verbs,  articles  and  pronouns. " —  W.  F.  Collier. 

"  His  phraseology  is  broken  and  hammered  out;  it  has 
been  said  to  resemble  repousse  metal- work.  He  makes  it,  of 
set  purpose,  unmusical,  unbalanced,  with  sharp  turns,  with 
weak  endings  and  mere  lapses." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"His  books  are  not  easy  reading;  they  are  a  kind  of 
wrestling  to  most  persons.  His  style  is  like  a  road  made  of 
rocks  ;  when  it  is  good,  there  is  nothing  like  it ;  and  when  it 
is  bad,  there  is  nothing  like  it." — John  Burroughs. 

"  He  leaps  in  unimpeded  jerks  from  one  end  of  the  field  of 
ideas  to  the  other ;  he  confounds  all  styles,  jumbles  all  forms, 
heaps  together  Pagan  allusions,  Bible  reminiscences,  German 
abstractions,  technical  terms,  poetry,  slang,  mathematics, 
physiology,  archaic  words,  neologisms.  There  is  nothing  he 
does  not  tread  down  and  ravage.  The  symmetrical  construe- 


CARLYLE  553 

tions  of  human  art  and  thought,  dispersed  and  unset,  are  piled 
under  his  hands  into  a  vast  mass  of  shapeless  ruins,  from  the 
tops  of  which  he  gesticulates  and  fights  like  a  conquering 
savage. ' ' — Taine. 

.  "  What  had  been  a  slight  fault  in  the  earlier  books,  caught 
from  half  imitation  of  Jean  Paul  and  other  German  writers  by 
a  secluded  man  of  genius  who  wished  to  speak  out  his  own 
depths  in  his  own  way,  became  in  his  later  books  a  vice  of 
style. ' '  — Henry  Morley. 

11  The  style  which  troubled  others,  and  troubled  himself 
when  he  thought  about  it,  was  perhaps  the  best  possible  to 
convey  thoughts  which  were  often  like  the  spurting  of  vol- 
canic fire;  but  it  was  inharmonious,  rough-hewn,  and  savage." 
— J,  A.  Fronde. 

' '  And  so  thoroughly  had  he  studied  the  works  of  Germans 
— '  he  wrestled,'  says  one,  'so  long  with  Jean  Paul  to  master 
his  spirit  that,  like  Jacob  of  old,  his  thigh  has  been  put  out, 
and  he  has  halted  in  his  English  ever  since.'  " — George  Daw- 
son. 

"  But  has  literature  any  parallel  to  the  oddity  of  the  vehi- 
cle chosen  to  convey  this  treasure  ?  I  delight  in  the  contents; 
the  form,  which  my  defective  apprehension  for  a  joke  makes 
me  not  appreciate,  I  leave  to  your  merry  discretion.  And 
yet  did  ever  wise  and  philanthropic  author  use  as  defying  a 
diction  ?  As  if  society  were  not  sufficiently  shy  of  truth  with- 
out providing  beforehand  with  an  objection  to  the  form." — 
Emerson. 

"  Mr.  Carlyle's  resolution  to  convey  his  meaning  at  all  haz- 
ards makes  him  sieze  the  most  effectual  and  sudden  words,  in 
spite  of  usage  and  fashionable  taste ;  and  therefore,  when  he 
can  get  a  brighter  tint,  a  more  expressive  form,  by  means  of 
some  strange — we  must  call  it — Carlylism  ;  English,  Scotch, 
German,  Greek,  Latin,  French,  technical  slang,  American  or 
lunar,  or  altogether  superlunar,  transcendental,  and  drawn 
from  the  eternal  Nowhere,  he  uses  it  with  a  courage  which 


554  CARLYLE 

might  blast  an  academy  of  lexicographers  into  a  Hades  void 
even  of  vocables." — -John  Sterling. 

"  With  a  coriceptive  imagination  vigorous  beyond  any  in 
his  generation,  with  a  mastery  of  language  equalled  only  by 
the  greatest  poets,  he  wants  altogether  that  plastic  imagination, 
the  shaping  faculty  which  would  have  made  him  a  poet  in  the 
highest  sense.  He  is  a  preacher  and  a  prophet — anything 
you  will — but  an  artist  he  is  not  and  never  can  be.  It  is 
always  the  knots  and  gnarls  of  the  oaks  that  he  admires,  never 
the  perfect  and  balanced  tree." — Lowell. 

"Before  his  style  had  acquired  those  thunderous  qualities, 
the  vast-flowing  Solway  flood  of  the  style  by  which 
he  was  distinguished  in  after  life.     .     .     .     His  strange  tu- 
multuous  volcanic  style  with  its  extraordinary  stamp  of  a 
burning  earnestness  and  meaning,  which  were  incomprehen- 
sible to  the  multitude,  and  stupefy  instead  of  exciting  them. 
The  rhapsody  and  whirlwind  of  '  Sartor  Resartus  ' 
was  incomprehensible." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

' '  The  vague  popular  notion  that  this  style  consists  merely 
of  Germanizing,  and  especially  of  Richterizing,  of  English 
may  be  dismissed  at  once.  For,  in  the  first  place,  the  first 
evil  characteristic  of  a  purely  German  style,  as  it  appears  to 
the  impartial  considerer  of  German  literature  in  the  original, 
from  Wai  pain  von  Eschenbach  to  Heine,  is  absent.  That 
characteristic  is  clumsiness,  consequent  upon  length.  The 
style  of  Carlyle  is  never  clumsy  and  it  is  rarely  long. 
Pepys,  Voltaire,  Richter  suggest  themselves  turn  by  turn,  as 
the  antitypes  of  the  singular  hybrid  language  in  which  he  got 
his  thoughts  dressed  and  ready  for  the  inspection  of  man- 
kind. ' ' — Saintsbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  For  neither  would  Teufelsdrockh's  mad  daydream,  here  as 
we  presume  covertly  intended,  of  levelling  society  (levelling  it 
indeed  with  a  vengeance,  into  one  huge  drowned  marsh  ! )  and 


CARLYLE  555 

so  attaining  the  political  effects  of  nudity  without  its  figorific  or 
other  consequences — be  thereby  realized." — Sartor  Resartus. 

"  In  vain  did  the  winds  howl — forests  sounding  and  creaking, 
deep  calling  unto  deep — and  the  storms  heap  themselves  togeth- 
er into  one  huge  Arctic  whirlpool :  thou  flewest  through  the  mid- 
dle thereof,  striking  fire  from  the  highway  ;  wild  music  hummed 
in  thy  ears,  thou  too  wert  as  a  '  sailor  in  the  air  ;  '  the  wreck  of 
matter  and  the  crash  of  worlds  was  thy  element  and  propitiously 
wafting  tide." — Sartor  Resartus. 

"  In  which  circumstances,  it  occurred  to  the  mind  of  Ana- 
charsis  Clootz  that  while  so  much  was  embodying  itself  into  Club 
or  Committee  and  perorating  applauded,  there  yet  remained  a 
greater  and  greatest ;  of  which,  if  it  also  took  body  and  pero- 
rated, what  might  not  the  effect  be  :  Humankind  namely,  le 
Genre  Humain  itself !  In  what  rapt  creative  moment  the 
thought  rose  in  Anacharsis's  soul  ;  all  his  throes,  while  he  went 
about  giving  shape  and  birth  to  it ;  how  he  was  sneered  at  by 
cold  worldlings,  but  did  sneer  again,  being  a  man  of  polished 
sarcasm ;  and  moved  to  and  fro  persuasive  in  coffee-house  and 
soiree,  and  dived  down  assiduous-obscure  in  the  great  deep  of 
Paris,  making  his  thought  a  fact :  of  all  this  the  spiritual  biog- 
raphies of  that  period  say  nothing." — The  French  Revolution. 


9.  Lamentation  —  Gloominess — Despair. — "  With 
so  keen  a  sense  of  the  ludicrous  contrast  between  what  men 
might  be,  nay,  wish  to  be,  and  what  they  are,  and  with  a 
vehement  nature  that  demands  the  instant  realization  of  his 
vision  of  a  world  altogether  heroic,  it  is  no  wonder  that  Mr. 
Carlyle,  always  hoping  for  a  thing  and  always  disappointed, 
should  become  bitter.  Perhaps  if  he  expected  less  he  would 
find  more.  Saul  seeking  his  father's  asses  found  himself 
turned  suddenly  into  a  king  ;  but  Mr.  Carlyle,  on  the  look- 
out for  a  king,  always  seems  to  find  the  other  sort  of  animal. 
He  sees  nothing  on  any  side  of  him  but  a  procession  of  the 
Lord  of  Misrule;  in  gloomier  moments,  a  Dance  of  Death, 
where  everything  is  either  a  parody  of  what  is  noble  or  an 
aimless  jig  that  stumbles  finally  into  the  annihilation  of  the 


556  CARLYLE 

grave,  and  so  passes  from  one  nothing  to  another. 
No  doubt  Adam  depreciated  the  apple  that  the  little  Cain  on 
his  knee  was  crunching  by  comparison  with  those  he  himself 
had  tasted  in  Eden.  ...  By  degrees  the  humorous  ele- 
ment in  his  nature  gains  ground,  till  it  overmasters  all  the 
rest.  Becoming  always  more  boisterous  and  obtrusive,  it 
ends  at  last,  as  such  humor  must,  in  cynicism.  In  '  Sartor 
Resartus  '  it  is  still  kindly,  still  infused  with  sentiment ;  and 
the  book,  with  its  mixture  of  indignation  and  farce,  strikes 
one  as  might  the  prophecies  of  Jeremiah,  if  the  marginal 
comments  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sterne  in  his  wildest  mood 
had  by  some  accident  been  incorporated  with  the  text. 
Unhappily  the  bit  of  mother  from  Mr.  Swift's  vinegar  barrel 
has  had  strength  enough  to  sour  all  the  rest." — Lowell. 

"  The  idea  with  which  Mr.  Carlyle's  earthly  habitation  im- 
presses him  is  a  very  melancholy  one — everywhere  dust,  rags, 
shabbiness,  mildew,  and  cobwebs  inhabited  by  monstrous 
spiders.  The  most  cheerful  nature  once  fully  possessed  with 
this  imagination  and  habituated  to  look  on  this  scene  of  moral 
desolation,  must  inevitably  catch  a  sympathetically  mournful 
if  not  dreary  hue  ;  the  brightest  lake  overhung  by  such  a  sky 
must  be  dark  and  dismal.  Hence  the  picture  conveyed  to 
the  reader,  with  more  or  less  of  a  kind  of  a  forcible  vagueness 
in  all  his  works,  is  that  of — This  Planet  in  Tatters  and  Mr. 
Carlyle  weeping  over  it.  Such  a  doctrine,  '  Woe  to  thee,  O 
Planet !  '  can,  if  conveyed  in  a  prophetic  tone,  appear  only 
as  a  Jeremiad." — W.  E.  Henley. 

"An  awful  shadow  accompanies  the  brilliant  sky  of  your 
genius.  That  dark  humor  of  yours,  that  woful  demon  from 
whose  companionship,  by  the  law  of  your  existence,  you 
cannot  be  free,  tolls  funeral-bells  and  chants  the  dirges  of 
death  in  your  ears  forever.  What  your  faith  does  not 
take  with  warmth  to  your  bosom,  it  must  spurn  violently 
away ;  where  you  cannot  hope  strongly,  you  must  vehemently 
despair ;  what  your  genius  does  not  illumine  to  your  heart 


CARLYLE  557 

ft  must  bury  as  in  shadows  of  eternal  night. "  -  —  Masson  to 
Carlyle. 

"He  bewails  his  gloom  and  loneliness  and  the  isolation  of 
his  soul  in  the  paths  in  which  he  was  called  to  walk. 
Carlyle  does  not  communicate  the  gloom  he  feels ;  '  tis  the 
most  tonic  despair  to  be  found  in  literature.  There  is  a  kind 
of  felicity  in  it.  For  one  thing,  it  sprang  from  no  personal 
disappointment  or  selfishness.  It  always  has  the  heroic 
tinge.  .  .  .  Carlyle  was  a  man  of  sorrow,  and  sorrow 
springs  from  sympathy  and  love.  A  sorrowing  man  is  a  living 
man.  His  is  the  Old  World  sorrow,  the  inheritance  of  ages, 
the  grief  of  justice  and  retribution  over  the  accumulated 
wrongs  and  sufferings  of  centuries.  ...  It  was  his  own 
glory  that  he  never  flinched ;  that  his  despair  only  nerved  him 
to  work  the  harder ;  the  thicker  the  gloom,  the  more  his  light 
shone." — -John  Burroughs. 

"  All  his  qualities  have  a  certain  virulence,  coupled  though 
it  be,  in  his  case,  with  the  utmost  impatience  of  Christendom 
and  Jewdom  and  all  existing  presentiments  of  the  good  old 
story.  He  talks  like  a  very  unhappy  man,  profoundly  soli- 
tary, displeased,  and  hindered  by  all  men  and  things  about 
him,  biding  his  time,  meditating  how  to  undermine  and 
explode  the  whole  world  of  nonsense  that  torments." — 
Emerson. 

"  Carlyle  belonged  to  a  family  group  who  were  'always 
dubious  of  other  people,  never  certain  of  the  good  meaning  of 
those  outside  of  their  circle,  though  very  confident  of  their 
own.'  .  .  .  His  struggles  with  his  health,  with  his  temper, 
with  the  exclusive  and  high-strung  nature  which  was  the  great 
drawback  of  his  genius,  were  sometimes  tragical,  often  whim- 
sical, sometimes  laughable.  .  .  .  His  mission  was  to 
show  to  the  world  the  cloud- wrappings,  the  strange  delusive 
vapors,  the  deep  abysses  of  mystery  in  which  our  little  tangi- 
ble life  floats,  surrounded  on  every  side  by  bewildering  dark- 
ness and  wonders  which  no  man  can  clear  up.  To  those  who 


558  CARLYLE 

saw  in  it  a  clear,  comfortable  solid  universe  enough,  the  best 
of  all  possible  worlds,  in  which  man's  chief  end  was  to  attain 
comfort  and  respectability,  he  was  a  great  destructive,  pull- 
ing down  every  foundation  and  leaving  the  unhappy  soul 
weltering  in  the  mists  and  marshes  of  the  unknowable." — 
Mrs.  Oliphant. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Then,  in  that  strange  Dream,  how  we  clutch  at  shadows  as 
if  they  were  substances  ;  and  sleep  deepest  while  fancying  our- 
selves most  awake  !  Which  of  your  Philosophical  Systems  is 
other  than  a  dream-theorem  ;  a  net  quotient,  confidently  given 
out,  where  divisor  and  dividend  are  both  unknown  ?  What  are 
all  your  national  Wars,  with  their  Moscow  Retreats  and  sangui- 
nary hate-filled  Revolutions  but  the  Somnambulism  of  uneasy 
Sleepers  ?  This  dreaming,  this  Somnambulism,  is  what  we  on 
Earth  call  Life  ;  wherein  the  most  indeed  undoubtingly  wander, 
as  if  they  knew  right  hand  from  left ;  yet  they  only  are  wise  who 
know  that  they  know  nothing." — Sartor  Resartus. 

"  In  our  and  old  Johnson's  dialect,  man  has  lost  the  soul  out  of 
him  ;  and  now,  after  the  due  period, — begins  to  find  the  want  of 
it !  This  is  verily  the  plague-spot ;  centre  of  the  universal  S^- 
cial  Gangrene  threatening  all  modern  things  with  frightful  death. 
To  him  that  will  consider  it,  here  is  the  stem,  with  its  roots  and 
taproot,  with  its  world-wide  upas-boughs  and  accursed  poison- 
exudations,  under  which  the  world  lies  writhing  in  atrophy  and 
agony.  You  touch  the  focal-centre  of  all  our  disease,  of  our 
frightful  nosology  of  diseases,  when  you  lay  your  hand  on  this. 
There  is  no  religion  ;  there  is  no  God  ;  man  has  lost  his  soul,  and 
vainly  seeks  antiseptic  salt.  Vainly  :  in  killing  Kings,  in  passing 
Reform  Bills,  in  French  Revolutions,  Manchester  Insurrections, 
is  found  no  remedy.  The  foul  elephantine  leprosy,  alleviated 
for  an  hour,  reappears  in  new  force  and  desperateness  next 
hour." — Past  and  Present. 

"  To  me  this  all-deafening  blast  of  Puffery,  of  poor  Falsehood 
grown  necessitous,  of  poor  Heart-Atheism  fallen  now  into  En- 
chanted Workhouses,  sounds  too  surely  like  a  Doom's-blast !  I 
have  to  say  to  myself  in  old  dialect  :  '  God's  blessing  is  not  writ- 


CARLYLE  559 

ten  on  all  this  ;  His  curse  is  written  on  all  this ! '  Unless  per- 
haps the  Universe  be  a  chimera ; — some  old  totally  deranged 
eight-day  clock,  dead  as  brass  ;  which  the  Maker,  if  there  ever 
was  any  Maker,  has  long  ceased  to  meddle  with."  —  Past  and 
Present. 

10.  Exaltation  of  the  Individual  —  Hero  Wor- 
ship.— "  Mr.  Carlyle  comprehends  only  the  individual:  the 
true  sense  of  the  unity  of  the  human  race  escapes  him.  He 
sympathizes  with  all  men,  but  it  is  with  the  separate  life  of 
each  and  not  with  their  collective  life.  .  .  .  He  seeks 
among  his  equals  in  intelligence,  not  the  Englishman,  the 
Italian,  the  German,  but  the  man  ;  he  adores,  not  the  god  of 
one  sect,  of  one  period,  or  of  one  people,  but  God." — 
J.  Mazzini. 

"  Great  is  his  reverence  for  realities — for  all  such  traits  as 
spring  from  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the  actor.  He  humors  this 
into  an  idolatry  of  strength.  A  strong  nature  has  a  charm 
for  him  previous,  it  would  seem,  to  all  inquiry  whether  the 
force  be  divine  or  diabolic." — Emerson. 

"  And  more  especially,  though  not  exclusively,  does  he 
revere  and  study  those  living  nearest  to  our  own  time  and  cir- 
cumstances, in  whom  he  may  find  monumental  examples  of 
the  mode  in  which  our  difficulties  are  to  be  conquered.  These 
men  he  rejoices  in  and  eminently  succeeds  in  delineating,  in 
enabling  us  to  see  what  is  essential  and  physiognomical  in 
each,  and  how  the  facts  of  nature  and  society  favored  and 
opposed  the  formation  of  his  life  into  a  large  completeness. 
The  hindrances  such  a  man  had  to  overcome,  the  energies  by 
which  he  vanquished  them,  and  the  work,  whatever  it  might 
have  been,  which  he  thus  accomplished  for  mankind,  appear 
in  these  pictures  with  lucid  clearness  marked  with  a  force 
and  decision  of  hand  and  style  worthy  of  the  greatest  mas- 
ters."— John  Sterling. 

"  Carlyle  was,  as  everyone  knows,  a  hero  worshipper.  .  .  . 
He  is  never  himself  until  he  has  discovered  or  invented  a  hero; 


560  CARLYLE 

and  when  he  has  got  him,  he  tosses  him  and  dandles  him  as  a 
mother  her  babe." — Augustine  Birrell. 

"  Mr.  Carlyle  .has  invented  the  Hero-cure,  and  all  who 
recommend  any  other  method,  or  see  any  hope  of  healing  else- 
where, are  either  quacks  and  charlatans  or  their  victims.  .  .  . 
At  first  he  made  out  very  well  with  remarkable  men  ;  then, 
lessening  the  water  and  increasing  the  spirit,  he  took  to  He- 
roes ;  and  now  he  must  have  downright  inhumanity,  or  the 
draught  has  no  savor ;  so  he  gets  (5n  at  last  to  kings,  types  of 
remorseless  Force,  who  maintain  the  political  views  of  Ber- 
sekers  by  the  legal  principles  of  Lynch." — Lowell. 

"All  dreams  of  democracy,  republicanism,  or  equality, 
which  will  teach  men  that  there  is  to  come  the  day  when  there 
will  be  no  heroes  or  no  governors,  Thomas  Carlyle  has  essayed 
to  disprove.  .  .  .  With  respect  to  these  heroes  and  the 
worship  Carlyle  says  ought  to  be  paid  to  them,  they  seem  to 
serve  like  the  rounds  of  Jacob's  ladder,  to  lead  men  gradually 
up  from  the  earth  to  the  great  Lord  of  the  earth.  In  such  sense 
they  had  their  uses ;  and  there  is  small  fear  that  men,  in  giv- 
ing worship  to  the  heroes  of  the  world,  will  neglect  to  give 
due  reverence  to  the  Maker  of  heroes.  .  .  .  One  of  his 
greatest,  and,  as  I  think,  his  sublimest  attempts,  is  to  revive 
each  man's  faith  in  himself  and  in  his  individuality.  .  .  . 
This  is  a  diseased  want  of  manhood,  of  self-reliance  and  self- 
trust  ;  and  to  overthrow  this  Carlyle  has  done  much.  He  has 
pointed  to  single  men,  to  what  they  have  done  single-handed, 
and  has  shown  that  the  whole  world  lies  before  the  single 
man,  and  has  tried  to  get  you  to  look  inward  into  the  soul. ' ' 
— George  Dawson. 

"  It  seems  to  me  to  have  become  an  imperative  requisition 
of  your  mind  that  nine-tenths  of  mankind  should  be  fools. 
They  must  be  so ;  else  you  have  no  place  for  them  in  your 
system,  and  know  not  what  to  do  with  them.  As  fools,  you 
have  full  arrangements  made  for  their  accommodation.  Some 
hero,  some  born  ruler  of  men  is  to  come  forth  (out  of  your 


CARLYLE  56 r 

books)  and  reduce  them  to  obedience  and  lord  it  over  them 
in  a  most  useful  manner.  But  if  they  will  not  be  fools,  if 
they  contumaciously  refuse  to  be  fools,  they  disturb  the  nec- 
essary relation  of  kingship,  and,  of  course,  deserve  much 
reputation." — Masson  to  Carlyle. 

"  How  he  loves  all  the  battling,  struggling,  heroic  souls  ! 
Whenever  he  comes  upon  one  such  in  his  histories,  no  matter 
how  obscure,  he  turns  aside  to  lay  a  wreath  upon  his  tomb. 
.  .  .  Carlyle  wants  an  actual  flesh-and-blood  hero,  and 
what  is  more,  wants  him  immersed  head  and  ears  in  the  actual 
affairs  of  this  world." — -John  Burroughs. 

"Devotion  to  the  heroic  does  not  prevent  the  assumption  of 
a  tone  toward  the  great  mass  of  the  unheroic  which  implies  that 
they  are  no  more  than  two-legged  mill  horses,  ever  treading  a 
fixed  and  unalterable  round." — Henry  Morley. 

"  Carlyle's  worship  of  strength  and  force,  his  love  for  the 
bold,  the  daring,  for  uncompromising  action  and  the  tenacity 
that  never  loses  hold  of  its  object." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"Loving  the  glory  and  knowing  the  utility  of  the  snows 
and  hurricanes  of  winter,  he  looks  with  contempt  on  the  noise- 
less operations  of  nature  which  succeed ;  on  the  loosening  of 
the  moist,  rich  soil  and  the  unseen  but  universal  quickening 
of  vegetation.  .  .  .  We  feel  annoyed  that  Carlyle  should 
have  lent  even  the  semblance  of  his  support  to  that  silly  small 
fry  who  fancy  they  are  forcible  when  they  affect  to  worship 
force.  .  .  .  All  the  king's  [Frederick's]  weaknesses,  vices, 
and  brutalities  are  gulped  down  alike.  Nothing  comes  amiss 
to  him.  And  whether  it  is  the  murder  of  a  gigantic  carpen- 
ter, the  bullying  of  a  diminutive  professor,  or  personal  vio- 
lence to  his  own  son  or  daughter,  it  is  all  the  same.  They 
are  all  smoothed  down  somehow  by  Carlyle's  peculiar  phrase- 
ology and  somehow  masticated  into  virtues.  .  .  .  He 
has  a  giant's  strength ;  it  is  only  to  be  regretted  that  he  too 
frequently  uses  it  with  the  wild  energy  of  a  giant." — T.  £. 
Kebbd. 

36 


562  CARLYLE 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  had  this  man  [Cromwell]  gained  ;  what  had  he  gained  ? 
He  had  a  life  of  sore  strife  and  toil,  to  his  last  day.  Fame,  am- 
bition, place  in  history  ?  His  dead  body  was  hung  in  chains  ; 
his  '  place  in  history ' — place  in  history,  forsooth! — has  been  a 
place  of  ignominy,  accusation,  blackness  and  disgrace  ;  and 
here,  this  day,  who  knows  if  it  is  not  rash  in  me  to  be  among  the 
first  that  ever  ventured  to  pronounce  him  not  a  knave  and  liar 
but  a  genuinely  honest  man !  Peace  to  him.  Did  he  not,  in 
spite  of  all,  accomplish  much  for  us  ?  We  walk  smoothly  over 
his  great  rough  heroic  life  ;  step  over  his  body  sunk  in  the  ditch 
there.  We  need  not  spurn  it  as  we  step  on  it !  Let  the  hero 
rest.  It  was  not  to  men's  judgment  that  he  appealed  :  nor  have 
men  judged  him  very  well." — Lectures  on  Heroes. 

"  What  this  Odin  saw  into  and  taught  with  his  runes  and  his 
rhymes,  the  whole  Teutonic  people  laid  to  heart  and  carried  for- 
ward. His  way  of  thought  became  their  way  of  thought — such, 
under  new  conditions,  is  the  history  of  every  great  thinker  still. 
In  gigantic  confused  lineaments,  like  some  enormous  camera- 
obscura  shadow  thrown  upward  from  the  dead  deeps  of  the  past 
and  covering  the  whole  northern  heaven,  is  not  that  Scandinavian 
mythology  in  some  sort  of  portraiture  of  this  man  Odin  ?  The 
gigantic  image  of  his  natural  face,  legible  or  not  legible  there, 
expanded  and  confused  in  that  manner  !  Ah,  thought,  I  say,  is 
always  thought.  No  great  man  lives  in  vain.  The  history  of  the 
world  is  but  the  biography  of  great  men."— Heroes  and  Hero 
Worship. 

' '  There  was  an  eye  to  see  in  this  man  [Napoleon] ,  a  soul  to 
dare  and  do.  He  rose  naturally  to  be  the  king.  All  men  saw 
that  he  was  such.  The  common  soldiers  used  to  say  on  the  march  : 
'  These  babbling  avocats  up  at  Paris  ;  all  talk  and  no  work ! 
What  wonder  it  runs  all  wrong  ?  We  shall  have  to  go  and  put  our 
petit  caporal  there.'  They  went,  and  put  him  there ;  they  and 
France  at  large.  Chief-consulship,  emperorship,  victory  over  Eu- 
rope ;  till  the  poor  lieutenant  of  La  Fere,  not  unnaturally,  might 
seem  to  himself  the  greatest  of  all  men  that  had  been  in  the  world 
for  some  ages." — Heroes  and  Hero  Worship. 


CARLYLE  563 

II.  Skill  in  Portraiture— Vividness— Dramatic 
Power. —  "Such  living  conceptions  of  character  we  find 
nowhere  else  in  prose.  The  figures  of  most  historians  seem 
like  dolls  stuffed  with  bran,  whose  whole  substance  runs  out 
through  any  hole  that  criticism  may  tear  in  them  ;  but  Car- 
lyle's  are  so  real  in  comparison  that  if  you  prick  them  they 
bleed. ' ' — Lowell. 

"  And  this  was  Carlyle's  special  gift — to  bring  dead  things 
and  dead  people  actually  to  life  ;  to  make  the  past  once  more 
the  present  and  to  show  us  men  and  women  playing  their 
parts  on  the  mortal  stage  as  real  flesh-and-blood  human  creat- 
ures, with  every  feature  which  he  ascribes  to  them  authen- 
ticated ;  not  the  most  trifling  incident  invented,  and  yet 
as  a  result  figures  as  completely  alive  as  Shakespeare's  own. 
Very  few  writers  have  possessed  this  double  gift  of  accuracy  and 
representative  power.  I  could  mention  only  two,  Thucydides 
and  Tacitus  ;  and  Carlyle's  power  as  an  artist  is  greater  than 
either  of  theirs.  Lockhart  said  when  he  read  '  Past  and  Pres- 
ent,' that,  except  Scott,  in  this  particular  function  no  one 
equalled  Carlyle.  .1  would  go  farther,  and  say  no  writer  in  any 
age  equalled  him.  Dramatists,  novelists,  have  drawn  character 
with  similar  vividness,  but  it  is  the  inimitable  distinction  of 
Carlyle  to  have  painted  actual  persons  with  as  much  life  in 
them  as  novelists  have  given  to  their  own  inventions,  to  which 
they  might  ascribe  what  traits  they  pleased." — J.  A.  Froude. 

"  Gifted  with  that  objectivity  of  which  Goethe  has  in  re- 
cent times  given  us  the  highest  model,  he  so  identifies  him- 
self with  the  things,  events,  or  men  which  he  exhibits  that  in 
his  portraits  and  his  descriptions  he  attains  a  rare  lucidness  of 
outline,  force  of  coloring,  and  graphic  precision  ;  they  are 
not  imitations  but  reproductions.  And  yet  he  never  loses  in 
the  detail  the  'characteristic,'  the  unity  of  the  object,  being, 
or  idea  which  he  wishes  to  exhibit." — Mazzini. 

"  What  he  generally  attempts,  and  achieves  with  supreme 
success,  is  imaginatively  to  realize  the  events  and  characters 


564  CARLYLE 

with  which  he  has  to  deal  and  to  present  them  to  us  in  such 
startling  life-like  colors  that  we  almost  seem  to  see  the  place 
and  know  in  person  the  men  of  the  story.  Nor  does  he 
achieve  this  result  by  any  of  the  deceptive  scene-painting 
tricks  of  ordinary  picturesque  writing  but  by  a  kind  of  dra- 
matic reproduction,  based  on  the  most  careful  and  accurate 
study  of  facts,  which  lets  us  see  the  inmost  spirit  of  the  dram- 
atis persona  through,  and  along  with,  the  outward  fashion 
of  their  lives." — E.  Caird. 

"This  book  on  hero  worship,  in  common  with  Carlyle's 
historic  works,  has  the  singular  beauty  of  making  all  these 
heroes  live  and  move  before  us.  We  are  not  presented  with 
a  set  of  fleshless  abstractions,  but  have  the  very  men  living 
again  before  our  eyes.  All  this  is  done  by  the  ability  to 
supply  the  whole  man  from  a  knowledge  of  some  of  his 
deeds,  thoughts,  and  words.  .  .  .  He  does  not  strive  to 
give  us  a  finished  picture,  losing  its  power  by  its  very  finish, 
leaving  nothing  for  the  imagination  to  do  because  so  elabo- 
rated ;  but,  like  the  sketch  of  a  great  master,  teaching  as  much 
by  what  it  leaves  out  as  by  what  it  supplies — for  it  is  a  prin- 
ciple true  here,  that  where  imagination  has  naught  to  do 
mental  impression  will  be  comparatively  weakened." — George 
Dawson. 

"  His  Rembrandt-like  imagination  lighted  up  special  points 
and  scenes  in  the  world's  history  with  marvellous  force." — 
R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Carlyle's  '  French  Revolution  '  is  no  mere  record  but  a 
great  drama  passing  before  our  eyes.  We  are  made  spectators 
rather  than  readers  of  the  terrible  developments,  one  after  an- 
other, of  each  successive  act.  He  made  all  France  shimmer 
and  burn  before  our  eyes." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 


CARLYLE  565 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Sleek  Pache,  the  Swiss  Schoolmaster,  he  that  sat  frugal  in  his 
Alley,  the  wonder  of  neighbors,  has  got  lately — whither  thinks 
the  reader  ?  To  be  Minister  of  War  !  Madame  Roland,  struck 
with  his  sleek  ways,  recommended  him  to  her  husband  as  Clerk  ; 
the  sleek  Clerk  had  no  need  of  salary,  being  of  true  Patriotic 
temper.  He  would  come  with  a  bit  of  bread  in  his  pocket,  to 
save  dinner  and  time  ;  and,  munching  incidentally,  do  three 
men's  work  in  a  day  ;  punctual,  silent,  frugal — the  sleek  Tartuffe 
that  he  was." — The  French  Revolution. 

"  And  Dumouriez  is  swept  back  on  this  wing  and  swept  back 
on  that,  and  is  like  to  be  swept  back  utterly  ;  when  he  rushes  up 
in  person,  the  prompt  Polymetis  ;  speaks  a  prompt  word  or  two  ; 
and  then,  with  clear  tenor-pipe,  '  uplifts  the  Hymn  of  the  Marseil- 
lese,  entonna  la  Marseillaise?  ten  thousand  tenor  or  bass  pipes 
joining  ;  or  say  some  forty  thousand  in  all ;  for  every  heart  leaps 
at  the  sound  :  and  so,  with  rhythmic  march-melody,  waxing  ever 
quicker,  to  double  and  to  treble  quick,  they  rally,  they  advance, 
they  rush,  death- defy  ing,  man-devouring  ;  carry  batteries,  re- 
doubts, whatsoever  is  to  be  carried  ;  and,  like  the  fire  whirlwind, 
sweep  all  manner  of  Austrians  from  the  scene  of  action.  Thus, 
through  the  hands  of  Dumouriez,  may  Rouget  de  Lille,  in  figura- 
tive speech,  be  said  to  have  gained,  miraculously,  like  another 
Orpheus,  by  his  Marseillese  fiddle  -  strings  (fidibus  canoris],  a 
Victory  of  Jemappes  and  conquered  the  Low  Countries." — The 
French  Revolution. 

"  Moses  withdrew  ;  but  Nature  and  her  vigorous  veracities  did 
not  withdraw.  The  men  of  the  Dead  Sea,  when  we  next  went  to 
visit  them,  were  all  '  changed  into  Apes ' ;  sitting  on  the  trees 
there,  grinning  now  in  the  most  unaffected  manner  ;  gibbering 
and  chattering  very  genuine  nonsense  ;  finding  the  whole  Universe 
now  a  most  indisputable  Humbug !  The  Universe  has  become 
a  Humbug  to  these  Apes  who  thought  it  one.  There  they  sit 
and  chatter,  to  this  hour  ;  only,  I  believe,  every  Sabbath  there  re- 
turns to  them  a  bewildered  half-consciousness,  half-reminiscence  ; 
and  they  sit,  with  their  wizzened,  smoke-dried  visages  and  such 
an  air  of  supreme  tragicality  as  Apes  may  ;  looking  out  through 
those  blinking  smoke-bleared  eyes  of  theirs  into  the  wonderful- 


566  CARLYLE 

est  universal  smoky  Twilight  and  undecipherable  disordered  Dusk 
of  Things." — Past  and  Present. 

12.  Fondness  for  Apostrophe,  Exclamation,  and 
Interrogation. — "  Much  of  his  peculiar  manner  is  made 
up  of  the  special  figures  of  Interrogation,  Exclamation,  and 
Apostrophe.  .  .  .  Interrogation  is  a  large  element  in  his 
mannerism.  It  is  not  merely  an  occasional  means  of  special 
emphasis;  it  is  a  habitual  mode  of  transition,  used  by  Carlyle 
almost  universally  for  the  vivid  introduction  of  new  agents 
and  new  events.  .  .  .  Exclamation  occurs  in  every 
mood.  Sometimes  in  wonder  and  elation  ;  sometimes  in  de- 
rision and  contempt ;  sometimes  in  pity  ;  sometimes  in  fun  ; 
sometimes  in  real  admiration  and  affection.  .  .  .  The 
apostrophizing  habit  is  perhaps  the  greatest  notability  of  his 
mannerism.  His  make  of  mind  compels  him  to  adopt  this 
art  of  style,  apart  from  his  consciousness  of  the  power  it  gives 
him  as  a  literary  artist.  It  provides  one  outlet  among  others 
for  his  deep-seated  dramatic  tendency.  Farther,  it  suits  his 
active  turn  of  mind  and  favorite  mode  of  the  enjoyment  of 
power  ;  it  gives  scope  for  his  daring  familiarity  with  person- 
ages, whether  for  admiration  or  for  humour,  and  meets  with 
no  check  from  any  regard  for  offended  conventionalities." 
— Minto. 

"  Add  to  this  exclamations,  interrogations,  apostrophes  to 
the  characters,  to  the  reader,  to  hearer,  to  earth,  to  things  in 
general.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  an  idea  of  the  way  in 
which  our  author  abuses  the  words — God,  Infinity,  Eternity, 
Profundity.  It  is  true  that  he  freshens  them  up  by  putting 
•them  in  the  plural,  and  saying  '  the  Immensities,'  '  the  Si- 
lences," '  the  Eternal  Veracities.'  " — Edmond  Scherer. 

"We  urge  that   he  is  inflicting  a  permanent  injury  upon 

English   literature  by  adhering  to  his  present  [1864]  style. 

.     In  the  young  writers  of  the  day  the  debasing  effect 

of  this  example  is  constantly  perceptible.      .      .      .      Perhaps 


CARLYLE  567 

the  commonest  of  all  the  faults  that  we  are  called  upon  to 
criticise  is  the  use  of  those  authorial  '  asides  '  and  apostro- 
phes which  deform  the  pages  of  almost  every  other  biographi- 
cal or  historical  work  that  issues  from  the  press." — T.  £. 
Kebbel. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Foolish  world,  what  went  ye  out  to  see  ?  A  tankard  scoured 
bright:  and  do  there  not  lie,  of  the  self  same  pewter,  whole 
barrowfuls  of  tankards,  though  by  worse  fortune  all  still  in  the 
dim  State  ?  " — Essay  on  Scott. 

"  Courage,  reader !  Never  can  the  historical  inquirer  want 
pabulum,  better  or  worse  ;  are  there  not  forty-eight  longitudinal 
feet' of  small-printed  history  in  thy  daily  newspapers  ?  " — Essay 
on  History. 

"  But  the  unhappy  Dragoman  has  already  been  chastised,  per- 
haps too  sharply.  If,  warring  with  the  reefs  and  breakers  and 
cross -eddies  of  Life,  he  still  hover  on  this  side  the  shadow  of 
night,  and  any  word  of  ours  might  reach  him,  we  would  rather 
say:  Courage,  brother!  grow  honest,  and  times  will  mend." — 
Essay  on  Goethe. 

"  Weep  ye  by  the  stream  of  Babel,  decent  clean  English-Irish  ; 
weep,  for  there  is  cause,  till  you  can  do  something  better  than 
weep  ;  but  expect  no  Babylonian  or  any  other  mortal  to  concern 
himself  with  that  affair  of  yours  !  And,  on  the  whole,  I  would 
recommend  you  rather  to  give  up  '  weeping ' — take  to  working 
out  your  meaning  rather  than  weeping  it." — Irish  Journey. 

"  O  brother  !  is  that  what  thou  callest  prosaic  ;  of  small  inter- 
est ?  Awake,  poor  troubled  sleeper  :  shake  off  thy  torpid  night- 
mare dream  ;  look,  see,  behold  it." — The  Diamond  Necklace. 

"  Away,  you!  begone  swiftly,  ye  regiments  of  the  line  !  in  the 
name  of  God  and  of  his  poor  struggling  servants,  sore  put  to  it 
to  live  these  bad  days,  I  mean  to  rid  myself  of  you  with  some  de- 
gree of  brevity." — The  French  Revolution. 

13.  Rare  but  Effective  Pathos.—"  Carlyle's  writings 
are  not  without  gleams  of  pathos  all  the  more  touching  from 
the  surrounding  ruggedness." — Minto. 

"  Carlyle,  rugged  and  gnarled  though  he  was,  none  the  less 


568  CARLYLE 

was  a  great  artist,  not  of  the  mellifluous,  but  of  the  strong  and 
vehement  order,  delighting  in  the  Titanic,  yet  intermingling 
it,  ever  and  anon,  with  soft  bursts  of  pathos  ;  as  you  see  some 
rough  granite  mountain  with  here  and  there  well-springs  of 
clearest  water  and  streaks  of  greenest  verdure." — Principal 
Shairp. 

"Mingled,  too,  with  this  unseemly  fury,  and  denouncing 
through  all  their  unmeasured  and  lacerating  language,  there 
is  discernible  in  both  men  [Kingsley  and  Carlyle]  a  rich  vein 
of  beautiful  and  pathetic  tenderness.  This  is  most  marked 
in  Mr.  Carlyle,  as  might  be  expected  from  his  far  deeper 
nature."—  W.  R.  Greg. 

"  Anon,  he  has  broken  away  from  your  side,  and  is  croon- 
ing up  into  the  azure  depths  a  lament  that  would  wring  tears 
from  the  very  stones,  if  they  would  only  try  to  understand 
it."—S.  Davey. 

"  From  the  sublime  to  the  ignoble,  from  the  pathetic  to  the 
grotesque,  is  but  a  step  with  Mr.  Carlyle." — Taine. 

Procter  calls  him  "a  great  master  of  pathos." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  One  is  sorry  for  Cromwell  in  his  old  days.  His  complaint  is 
incessant  of  the  heavy  burden  Providence  has  laid  on  him  ;  heavy, 
which  he  must  bear  till  death.  Old  Colonel  Hutchinson,  as  his 
wife  relates  it,  Hutchinson,  his  old  battle-mate,  coming  to  see 
him  on  some  indispensable  business,  much  against  his  will — 
Cromwell '  follows  him  to  the  door'  in  a  most  fraternal,  domestic, 
conciliatory  style  ;  begs  that  he  would  be  reconciled  to  him,  his 
old  brother-in-arms  ;  says  how  much  it  grieves  him  to  be  mis- 
understood, deserted  by  true  fellow-soldiers,  dear  to  him  from 
of  old  ;  the  rigid  Hutchinson,  cased  in  his  Republican  formula, 
sullenly  goes  away. — And  the  man's  head  now  white  ;  his  strong 
arm  growing  weary  with  his  long  work  !  I  think  always  too  of 
his  poor  Mother,  now  very  old,  living  in  that  palace  of  his  ;  a 
right  brave  woman ;  as  indeed  they  lived  all  an  honest  God- 
fearing household  there  :  if  she  heard  a  shot  go  off  she  thought  it 


CARLYLE  569 

was  her  own  son  killed.  He  had  to  come  to  her  at  least  once  a 
day,  that  she  might  see  with  her  own  eyes  that  he  was  yet  living. 
— Heroes  and  Hero  Worship. 

"  Edward  Irving's  warfare  has  closed  ;  if  not  in  victory,  yet  in 
invincibility  and  faithful  endurance  to  the  end.  .  .  .  The 
terge  heart,  with  its  large  bounty,  where  wretchedness  found 
solacement  and  they  that  were  wandering  in  darkness  the  light 
as  of  a  home,  has  paused.  The  strong  man  can  no  more  :  beaten 
on  from  without,  undermined  from  within,  he  must  sink  over- 
wearied, as  at  nightfall,  when  it  was  yet  but  the  mid-season  of 
day.  Irving  was  forty-two  years  and  some  months  old  ;  Scot- 
land sent  him  forth  a  Herculean  man  ;  our  mad  Babylon  wore 
and  wasted  him  with  all  her  engines  ;  and  it  took  her  twelve 
years.  He  sleeps  with  his  fathers  in  that  loved  birth-land  : 
Babylon,  with  its  deafening  inanity,  rages  on  ;  but  to  him  hence- 
forth innocuous,  unheeded  forever." — On  the  Death  of  Edward 
Irving. 


GEORGE   ELIOT,  1819-1880 

Biographical  Outline. — Marian  Evans,  born  November 
22,  1819,  at  Asbury  Farm,  parish  of  Chilvers  Colon,  War- 
wickshire, England  ;  her  father,  partly  portrayed  in  "  Adam 
Bede, ' '  was  agent  for  the  estates  of  Francis  Newdigate ;  the 
family  reside  at  Griff  on  the  Asbury  estate  ;  in  1824  Marian 
is  sent  to  a  boarding-school  at  Attleborough,  Warwickshire, 
and  four  years  later  to  a  larger  one  at  Meneaton  ;  she  forms 
an  intimacy  here  with  Miss  Lewis,  the  principal  governess  ; 
before  her  tenth  year  Marian  devours  the  Waverley  novels,  the 
"  Essays  of  Elia,"  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  and  "  Rasselas  ;  " 
in  1832  she  enters  Miss  Franklin's  school  at  Coventry,  where 
she  manifests  rare  musical  gifts  ;  leaves  school  in  1835,  loses 
her  mother  in  1836,  and  becomes  manager  of  her  father's 
household  ;  after  leaving  school  she  learns  Italian,  German, 
Greek,  and  Latin  from  private  tutors  ;  is  brought  to  observe 
the  Methodists  through  her  Aunt  Elizabeth,  a  Methodist 
preacher,  who  is  partially  portrayed  as  Dinah  Morris  in 
"  Adam  Bede;  "  publishes  a  religious  poem  in  the  Christian 
Observer  in  January,  1840  ;  reads  voraciously  ;  removes  with 
her  father  to  Coventry  in  1841  ;  forms  an  intimacy  with  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Charles  Bray  of  Coventry,  the  latter  a  prosperous 
ribbon  manufacturer,  who  was  writing  books  of  liberal  relig- 
ious tendency  ;  their  influence  and  the  reading  of  a  book  by 
Charles  Hennell  (brother  of  Mrs.  Bray)  on  the  origins  of 
Christianity  aid  in  changing  Miss  Evans's  religious  views ;  she 
refuses  to  go  to  church,  and  her  father  demands  a  separation  ; 
after  three  weeks'  separation  she  reconsiders,  returns  to  her 
father,  and  goes  to  church  ;  in  1844  she  is  induced  to  take  up 

570 


GEORGE   ELIOT  5/1 

the  translation  of  Strauss' s  "  Life  of  Jesus,"  begun  by  Dr. 
Brabant,  father  of  Charles  Hennell's  wife  ;  she  labors  under 
ill-health  and  other  great  discouragements,  but  completes  a 
conscientious  translation,  which  appears  in  1846  ;  she  devotes 
the  next  three  years  to  her  invalid  father,  who  dies  in  1849, 
leaving  her  a  small  income  ;  she  visits  the  Continent  with  the 
Brays,  and  in  October,  1849,  takes  rooms  in  the  house  of  the 
painter,  M.  d'Albert,  at  Geneva ;  she  returns  to  England  in 
March,  1850,  and  takes  up  her  residence  with  the  Brays;  in 
September,  1851,  becomes  assistant  editor  of  the  Westminster 
fieview  and  settles  in  London;  gives  up  editorial  work  in 
October,  1853;  meantime  translates  Feuerbach's  "Essence 
of  Christianity,"  which  appears  in  July,  1854;  forms  an  ac- 
quaintance and  a  friendship  with  Herbert  Spencer,  and 
through  him  meets  George  Henry  Lewes,  then  editor  of  the 
Leader ;  in  July,  1854,  she  enters  with  Lewes  into  domestic 
relations  regarded  by  herself  as  a  marriage,  though  not  sanc- 
tioned by  law ;  social  isolation  results ;  she  spends  the  next  six 
months  on  the  Continent  with  Lewes;  they  return  to  London 
in  March,  1856;  being  strongly  urged  to  try  fiction  by 
Lewes,  who  was  a  very  devoted  companion,  she  begins 
"Amos  Barton"  in  September,  1856  ;  the  first  part  of  "Amos 
Barton  "  appears  in  Blackwood1  s  Magazine  in  January,  1857, 
when  she  first  took  the  pseudonym  "George  Eliot,"  under 
which  all  her  later  writings  appeared  ;  she  completes  "Janet's 
Repentance  "  in  October,  1857;  publishes,  early  in  1858,  the 
collected  "  Scenes  from  Clerical  Life,"  which  are  warmly 
praised  by  Dickens,  who  divines  the  author's  sex  ;  she  com- 
pletes "  Adam  Bede  "  in  November,  1857,  and  receives  from 
Blackwood  ^800  for  four  years'  copyright;  in  1859  she 
settles,  with  Lewes,  at  Holly  Lodge,  Wandsworth ;  "Adam 
Bede ' '  appears  during  the  same  year  ;  sixteen  thousand  cop- 
ies are  sold  within  twelve  months,  and  Blackwood  volun- 
teers an  additional  ^800  ;  "The  Mill  on  the  Floss"  ap- 
pears in  April,  1860,  and  six  thousand  copies  are  sold  within 


5/2  GEORGE  ELIOT 

two  months  afterward  ;  she  visits  Italy  in  1860,  and  while 
in  Florence  projects  an  historical  novel  of  the  time  of 
Savonarola;  publishes  "  Silas  Marner,"  which  ends  her  first 
literary  period,  in  1861  ;  revisits  Florence  to  study  for 
"  Romola  "  in  May,  1861  ;  in  February,  1862,  she  refuses 
^10,000  for  the  copyright  of  "  Romola,"  and  prefers  to 
publish  it  serially  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine  for  ,£7,000;  it 
so  appeared  from  July,  1862,  to  August,  1863;  in  December, 
1860,  she  removes,  with  Lewes,  to  Blandford  Square,  Lon- 
don, and  in  November,  1863,  to  21  North  Bank,  Regent's 
Park;  she  completes  "Felix  Holt"  in  May,  1866;  early  in 
1867  she  visits  Spain  to  gain  impressions  for  her  "  Spanish 
Gypsy,"  a  poem  already  begun,  which  was  published  in  April, 
1868;  she  publishes  "  Middlemarch "  in  December,  1872, 
and  twenty  thousand  copies  are  sold  within  the  next  two  years ; 
she  receives  ^1,200  for  "  Middlemarch "  from  America; 
in  1874  she  publishes  a  volume  of  poems,  including  the 
' '  Legend  of  Jubal ;  "  "  Daniel  Deronda ' '  is  published  serially 
in  1876,  and  the  sales  exceed  even  those  of  "Middlemarch;  " 
in  1876  the  Leweses  buy  a  house  at  Withey,  near  God  aim  ing; 
during  1878  George  Eliot  writes  "  The  Impressions  of  Theo- 
phrastus  Such;"  Lewes  dies  in  November,  1878;  George 
Eliot  edits  his  unfinished  writings,  and  founds  in  his  honor 
a  studentship  in  physiological  investigation  worth  ^200  a 
year  ;  " Theophrastus  Such"  does  not  appear  till  May,  1879; 
in  April,  1880,  George  Eliot  formally  marries  J.  W.  Cross, 
who  had  been  an  intimate  friend  since  1869;  they  revisit  the 
Continent,  and,  returning,  settle  at  4  Cheyne  Walk,  Chelsea, 
London,  where  George  Eliot  dies,  December  22,  1880. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON   GEORGE  ELIOT'S  STYLE. 

Cooke,  G.  W.,  "A  Critical  Study."     Boston,  1883,  Osgood,  104-128. 

Browning,  O.,  "Great  Writers  "  (George  Eliot).  London,  1890,  Scott 
&  Co.,  136-180. 

Lord,  J.,  "Beacon  Lights  of  History."  New  York,  1885,  Fords,  How- 
ard &  Hurlburt,  5  :  467-512. 


GEORGE   ELIOT  573 

Hazeltine,  M.  W.,  "  Chats  about  Books. "     New  York,  1883,  Scribner, 

I-I3- 

Blind,  M.,  "  George  Eliot. "     Boston,  1883,  Roberts,  136-150. 
McCarthy,  J.,  "  Modern  Leaders."  New  York,  1872,  Sheldon,  136-144. 
Robertson,  E.  S.,  "English  Poetesses."     London,    1883,   Cassell,  327- 

334- 
Taylor,   B.,    "Critical  Essays,"  etc.     New  York,  1880,    Putnam,    339- 

347- 
Oliphant,    Mrs.,    "Victorian  Age  of  English  Literature."     New  York, 

1892,  Tail,  2:  460-471. 
Saintsbury,   G.,    "Corrected    Impressions."     New   York,    1895,    Dodd, 

Mead  &  Co.,  162-1/2. 
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338-347- 
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1-130  and  251-309. 
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397- 
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Putnam,  41-58. 
Hutton,  R.  H.,  "  Modern  Guides  of  Religious  Thought."     New  York, 

1891,  Macmillan,  151-268. 
Dowden,    E.,    "Studies    in    Literature."     London,    1878,   Kegan    Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  250-256. 
Stephen,  L.,    "Hours  in  a  Library."     New  York,   1894,    Putnam,  2: 

207-237. 
Magnus,  Lady  K.,  "Jewish  Portraits."     Boston,  1889,  Cupples  &  Up- 

ham,  1 :  83-98. 
Cross,  Mrs.  M.  A.  E.  C.,    "Essays,"  etc.  '  New  York,  1884,  Scribner. 

86  etc. 
Brown,  J.   C.,  "The   Ethics  of  George   Eliot's  Works."     Edinburgh. 

1879,  Blackwood. 

Kaufmann,  D.,  "  George  Eliot  and  Judaism. "     Edinburgh,  1877,  Black- 
wood,  89-96. 
Cross,  J.  W.,  "George  Eliot's  Life  in  Her  Letters,"  etc.     New  York, 

1885,  Harper,  4  volumes. 
Johnston,    R.    M.,    "Studies."     Indianapolis,    1891,    Bowen,  Merrill  & 

Co.,  1-106. 
Cleveland,    R.   E.,  "George  Eliot's  Poetry,"  etc.     New   York,    1885, 

Funk  &  Wagnalls,  7-25. 
Harnley,    Sir   E.,    "Shakespeare's  Funeral,"   etc.     Edinburgh,    1889, 

Blackwood,  215-270. 


574  GEORGE  ELIOT 

Lancaster,  H.  H.,  "  Essays  and  Reviews."     Edinburgh,  1876,  Edmon- 

ston  &  Douglass,  1 :  351-361. 
Seguin,    L.    E.,    "Scenes  and    Characters  from  the  Works  of  George 

Eliot."     London,  1888,  A.  Strahan,  1-19. 
Main,  A.,  "Selected  Sayings"  (from  George  Eliot).     Edinburgh,  1873, 

Blackwood. 
Anonymous,    "Wit   and    Wisdom  of   George    Eliot."      Boston,   1873, 

Roberts  Bros. 
Adams,  W.  H.,  "Celebrated  Englishwomen."     London,  1884,  White 

&  Co.,  222-291. 
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Cassell,  2  :   245-292. 
Dawson,    W.    F.,    "Quest   and  Vision."     London,    1892,    Hodder   & 

Stoughton,  128-157. 
Henley,  W.  E.,    "Views  and  Reviews."      New  York,  1890,    Scribner, 

I30-I33- 

James,  H.,  "  Partial  Portraits. "     London,  1888,   Macmillan,  37-52  and 

65-93- 
McCrie,  G.,  "  Religion  of  Our  Literature."     London,  1875,  Hodder  & 

Stoughton,  286. 
Myers,    F.  W.  H.,    "Essays — Modern."     London,   1883,    Macmillan, 

251-276. 
Paul,   C.    K.,   "Biographical  Sketches."     London,  1883,  Kegan  Paul, 

Trench  &  Co.,  141-170. 
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Damon,  171-179. 
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Appleton,  396-398. 
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161-168. 
Griswold,  H.  F.,   "Home   Life   of   British   Authors."     Chicago,  1887, 

351-362. 
Harrison,  F.,  "The  Choice  of  Books,"  etc.     London,  1886,  Macmillan, 

203-230. 
Hutton,  R.  H.,  "  Essays  on  Theology  and  Literature."     London,  1877, 

Macmillan,  2 :   294-367. 
Parton,  J.,  "  Some  Noted   Princes,"   etc.     New   York,    1886,   Crowell, 

62-65. 

Stephen,  L.,  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography."   London,  1888,  Mac- 
millan, 13 :   216-222. 


GEORGE  ELIOT  575 

Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1882, 

Griggs,  2 :  470-487- 
Lanier,   S.,    "Development  of  the  English  Novel."     New  York,  1892, 

Scribner,  151  etc. 
Fortnightly  Magazine,  43:   538-553  (O.   Browning);    26:  601-616  (S. 

Calvin). 
ll'estnrinstfr  Reviau,6\:   65-81;    160:    73-83;     Il6:     154-198;     124: 

160-208  (J.  W.  Cross);    117:  65-81. 
Dublin  Review,  5  :   371-394. 

International  Review,  10 :  447-458  (W.  F.  Roe). 
Scribner s  Monthly,  8:  685-703  (W.  C.  Wilkinson). 
Corn/till  Magazine,  43  :   8-23  (L.  Stephen). 
The  Nation,  40 :   283-284  and  325  (A.  V.  Dicey). 
Atlantic   Monthly,    51:     243-246   (M.    L.    Henry);  38:  684-694  (H. 

James). 

Harper's  Magazine,  62:  912-922  (C.  K.  Paul). 
Nineteenth  Century,  9 :   778-780  (Edith  Simcox). 
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London  Quarterly  Revie-M,  108:   469-478  (Lady  Eastlake). 
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The  Congregationalist,  14:   273-284  (J.  W.  Cross). 
North  British  Rti'iew,  45  :    197-228. 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  14:   273-279(7.   Morley). 
North  American  Review,  124:   50-57  (E.  P.  Whipple). 
International  Review,  7:   30-32  (Francis  McGuire). 
Contemporary  Revinv,  47:  372-391  (R.  H.  Hutton). 
British  Quarterly,  45  :    141-178. 
Quarterly  Review,  134:   336-350. 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

i.    Psychological   Analysis    of    Character. — "  It 

was  not  with  her  ethics  that  George  Eliot  wrote  her  novels,  it 
was  with  her  psychology ;  and  in  this  lies  the  secret  of  her 
power.  .  .  .  Accustomed  as  she  was  to  read  her  own 
heart  and  gifted  with  the  faculty  of  observation,  which  helps 
one  to  read  the  hearts  of  others,  nothing  astonished  her. 
.  .  .  George  Eliot  possesses  the  clairvoyance  which 


576  GEORGE  ELIOT 

divines  the  interior  play  of  passion,  the  experience  which 
knows  that  the  human  being  is  capable  of  all  contradictions, 
the  indulgence  which  tolerates  because  it  understands,  and, 
lastly,  the  gift  of  measure  and  the  taste  for  truth  which  prevent 
an  author  from  rushing  into  extremes,  from  idealizing  either 
the  beautiful  or  the  ugly,  from  making  figures  which  are 
heroes  or  monsters  in  black.  So,  if  we  add  to  psycho- 
logical divination  the  faculty  of  creating  living  characters,  we 
shall  have  George  Eliot's  novel."— JEJmone/  Scherer. 

"  George  Eliot's  manner  is  to  describe,  to  minutely  por- 
tray, and  to  dissect  to  the  last  muscle  and  nerve  the  person- 
ages of  her  great  dramas.  .  .  .  She  seeks  to  penetrate 
into  the  motives  of  life  and  to  reveal  the  hidden  springs  of  ac- 
tion, to  show  how  people  affect  each  other ;  how  ideas  mould 
the  destinies  of  the  individual.  .  .  .  She  devotes  more 
space  to  the  inner  life  and  character  of  her  personalities  than 
to  her  narratives  and  conversations.  .  .  .  None  of  her 
leading  characters  are  in  the  end  what  they  were  in  the  begin- 
ning. .  .  .  Characters  play  a  part  in  her  books  . 
for  the  sake  of  manifesting  the  soul,  in  order  that  the  unfolding 
of  psychological  analysis  may  go  on.  She  has  a  purpose  larger 
than  that  of  telling  a  story  or  describing  the  loves  of  a  few 
men  and  women.  Psychological  analysis  seems  out  of  place 
in  a  novel,  but  with  George  Eliot  it  is  a  chief  purpose  of  her 
writing.  She  lays  bare  the  soul,  opens  its  inmost  secrets,  and 
its  anatomy  is  minutely  studied.  She  traces  some  of  her 
characters  through  a  long  process  of  development,  and  shows 
how  they  are  affected  by  the  experiences  of  life. 
Novelists  usually  carry  their  characters  through  their  pages  on 
the  same  level  of  mind  and  life.  George  Eliot  not  only  does 
this  with  her  uncultured  characters,  but  she  shows  the  soul  in 
the  process  of  unfolding  or  expanding." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  We  meet  the  complaint  that  she  is  too  analytic ;  that  she 
is  the  confessor  rather  than  the  artist ;  and  is  more  anxious  to 
probe  the  conditions  of  her  heroines'  souls,  to  give  an  accurate 


GEORGE   ELIOT  577 

diagnosis  of  their    spiritual    complaints  and   an    account  of 
their  moral  evolution  than  to  show  us  the  character  in  action. 
This  is  in  part  true. ' ' — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Her  great  characteristic  is  her  knowledge  of  human  nat- 
ure and  the  grasp  of  thought  with  which  she  seizes  and  brings 
before  us  its  most  hidden  secrets.  Scott  said  of  Richardson 
that  '  in  his  survey  of  the  human  heart  he  left  neither  head, 
bay,  nor  inlet  until  he  had  traced  its  soundings  and  laid  it 
down  in  his  chart  with  all  its  minute  sinuosities,  its  depths, 
and  its  shallows. '  More  than  this  may  be  said  with  truth  of 
George  Eliot.  She  has  sounded  with  no  less  accuracy  than 
did  Richardson  the  depths  and  the  shallows  of  every  little  bay ; 
and  she  has  ventured  boldly  on  distant  seas  of  which  the 
storms  and  the  treacherous  calms  were  alike  to  him  unknown. 
.  .  Psychological  analysis  is  her  strength.  She  creates 
character,  she  devises  incident  and  situation  chiefly  that  she 
may  have  her  occasion  of  indulging  that  almost  superhuman 
faculty  which  is  hers  of  laying  bare  to  its  ultimate  microscopic 
secret  the  anatomy  of  the  living  human  consciousness  at 
play."— W.  C.  Wilkinson. 

"  She  placed  herself,  by  imagination  and  sympathy,  at  the 
inmost  core  of  the  natures  of  her  characters,  and  delineated 
them  from  within,  not  approached  them  from  without.  She 
did  not  merely  look  at  them,  but  she  looked  into  them,  and 
also  looked  through  them  to  the  spiritual  laws  they  obeyed  or 
violated.  She  kept  a  sort  of  relentless  watch  on  all  the  subtle 
interior  movements  of  their  minds  and  hearts  ;  and  they  could 
not  pass  into  a  dreaming  sleep  without  being  still  subject  to 
this  piercing  glance  into  the  fantasies  and  wild  incidents  of 
their  dreams. " — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  As  regards  the  passion  of  love,  she  does  not  portray  it, 
as  in  the  old-fashioned  novels,  leading  to  fortunate  marriages 
with  squires  and  baronets  ;  but  she  generally  dissects  it,  un- 
ravels it,  and  attempts  to  penetrate  its  mysteries — a  work  de- 
cidedly more  psychological  than  romantic  or  sentimental  and 
37 


578  GEORGE  ELIOT 

hence  more  interesting  to  scholars  and  thinkers  than  to  ordi- 
nary readers,  who  delight  in  thrilling  adventures  and  exciting 
narrations.  .  .  .  For  minute  analysis  of  character  and 
psychological  insight  she  has  never  been  surpassed." — -John 
Lord. 

"  The  world  was,  first  and  foremost,  for  George  Eliot,  the 
moral,  the  intellectual  world  ;  the  personal  spectacle  came 
after ;  and,  lovingly,  humanly  as  she  regarded  it,  we  con- 
stantly feel  that  she  cares  for  the  things  she  finds  in  it  only  so 
far  as  they  are  types.  The  philosophic  door  is  always  open  on 
her  stage,  and  we  are  aware  that  the  somewhat  cooling  draught 
of  ethical  purpose  draws  across  it.  ...  Nothing  is  finer, 
in  her  genius,  than  the  combination  of  her  love  of  general 
truth  and  love  of  the  special  case;  without  this,  indeed,  we 
should  not  have  heard  of  her  as  a  novelist,  for  the  passion  of 
the  special  case  is  surely  the  basis  of  the  story-teller's  art." — 
Henry  James. 

"There  is  too  much  exhaustive  analysis  of  all  the  petty 
people  of  the  petty  town  of  Middlemarch." — Lady  Wilde. 

"This  wonderful  transcript  of  humanity  ['  Adam  Bede,'] 
containing  so  much  that  is  usually  undiscovered  in  life,  the 
movement  of  the  heart  and  mind  in  the  workings  of  motive, 
.  .  .  abounded  in  spiritual  analysis  and  philosophy  which 
would  have  suited  neither  Scott's  mind  nor  his  time,  and  was 
more  broad  than  the  work  of  either  Dickens  or  Thackeray." 
— Mrs.  Oliphant. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Under  every  guilty  secret  there  is  hidden  a  brood  of  guilty 
wishes,  whose  unwholesome,  infecting  life  is  cherished  by  the 
darkness.  The  contaminating  effect  of  deeds  often  lives  less  in 
the  commission  than  in  the  consequent  adjustment  of  our  de- 
sires— the  enlistment  of  our  self-interest  on  the  side  of  falsity  ; 
as,  on  the  other  hand,  the  purifying  influence  of  public  confession 
springs  from  the  fact  that  by  it  the  hope  in  lies  is  forever  swept 


GEORGE   ELIOT  579 

away,  and  the  soul  recovers  the  noble  attitude  of  simplicity." 
— Romola. 

"  Oh,  the  delight  of  taking  out  that  little  box  and  looking  at 
the  ear-rings  !  Do  not  reason  about  it,  my  philosophical  reader, 
and  say  that  Hetty,  being  very  pretty,  must  have  known  that  it 
did  not  signify  whether  she  had  any  ornaments  or  not ;  and  that, 
moreover,  to  look  at  ear-rings  which  she  could  not  possibly  wear 
out  of  her  bed-room  could  hardly  be  a  satisfaction,  the  essence 
of  vanity  being  a  reference  to  the  impressions  produced  on  others  ; 
you  will  never  understand  women's  natures  if  you  are  so  exces- 
sively rational.  Try  to  divest  yourself  of  all  your  rational  preju- 
dices as  much  as  if  you  were  studying  the  psychology  of  a  canary- 
bird,  and  only  watch  the  movements  of  this  pretty  round  creat- 
ure as  she  turns  her  head  on  one  side  with  an  unconscious  smile 
at  the  ear-rings  nestled  in  the  little  box.  Ah  !  you  think,  it  is 
for  the  sake  of  the  person  who  has  given  them  to  her,  and  her 
thoughts  are  gone  back  now  to  the  moment  when  they  were  put 
into  her  hands.  No;  else  why  should  she  have  cared  to  have 
ear-rings  rather  than  anything  else  ?  And  I  know  that  she  had 
longed  for  ear-rings  from  among  all  the  ornaments  she  could 
imagine." — Adam  Bede. 

"Men  and  women  make  sad  mistakes  about  their  own  symp- 
toms, taking  their  vague  uneasy  longings,  sometimes  for  genius, 
sometimes  for  religion,  and  oftener  for  a  mighty  love." — Middle- 
march. 

2.  Preference  for  Homely  Types. — "The  sphere 
which  she  has  made  specially  her  own  is  that  quiet  English 
country  life  which  she  knew  in  early  youth.  It  has  been  de- 
scribed with  more  or  less  vivacity  and  sympathy  by  many  ob- 
servers. Nobody  has  approached  George  Eliot  in  the  power 
of  seizing  its  essential  characteristics  and  exhibiting  its  real 
charm.  She  has  done  for  it  what  Scott  did  for  the  Scotch 
peasantry,  or  Fielding  for  the  eighteenth-century  Englishman, 
or  Thackeray  for  the  higher  social  stratum  of  his  time.  "- 
Leslie  Stephen. 

"The  Midland  home,  the  plain  village  life,  the  humble 
toiling  country  folk,  shaped  for  her  the  scenes  and  characters 


580  GEORGE   ELIOT 

about  which  she  was  to  write.  She  was  raised  in  a  country 
of  historic  memories,  but  it  was  not  these,  however,  which 
attracted  her  so  much  as  the  pleasant  country,  the  quiet  vil- 
lages. With  observant  eyes  she  saw  the  world  about  her  as  it 
was,  and  she  entered  into  the  heart  of  its  life,  and  has  painted 
it  for  us  in  a  most  sympathetic,  appreciative  spirit.  The  sim- 
ple, homely,  unromantic  life  of  middle  England  she  has  made 
immortal  with  her  wit,  her  satire,  her  fine  description,  and 
her  keen  love  of  all  that  is  human." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  George  Eliot  early  showed  a  tendency  to  choose  her 
heroes  and  heroines  from  among  common  people,  living 
homely  lives  and  contending  with  the  sordid  troubles  of  an 
insignificant  existence.  She  laid  an  eloquent  stress  upon  the 
tragedy  and  passion  which  dwell  in  what  we  are  pleased  to 
call  'common  life.'  " — George  Dawson. 

"She  fastened  upon  the  English  middle  classes  and  the 
ordinary  English  poor,  and  turned  social  studies  of  them  into 
novels  which  it  is  an  education  to  read." — E.  S.  Robertson. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  now  the  half- weaned  calves  that  have  been  sheltering 
themselves  in  a  gorse-built  hovel  against  the  left-hand  wall, 
come  out  and  set  up  a  silly  answer  to  that  terrible  bark,  doubtless 
supposing  that  it  has  reference  to  a  bucket  of  milk." — Adam 
Bede. 

"  It  is  for  this  rare,  precious  quality  of  truthfulness  that  I  de- 
light in  many  Dutch  paintings,  which  lofty-minded  people  despise. 
I  find  a  source  of  delicious  sympathy  in  these  faithful  pictures  of 
a  monotonous,  homely  existence,  which  has  been  the  fate  of  so 
many  more  among  my  fellow  mortals  than  a  life  of  pomp  or  of 
absolute  indigence,  of  tragic  suffering  or  of  world-stirring  actions. 
I  turn,  without  shrinking,  from  cloud-borne  angels,  from  proph- 
ets, sybils,  and  heroic  warriors,  to  an  old  woman  bending  over 
her  flower-pot  or  eating  her  solitary  dinner,  while  the  noonday 
light,  softened  perhaps  by  a  screen  of  leaves,  falls  on  her  mob- 
cap  and  just  touches  the  rim  of  her  spinning-wheel  and  her  stone 


GEORGE   ELIOT  581 

jug  and  all  those  common  cheap  things  which  are  the  precious 
necessaries  of  life  to  her  : — or  I  turn  to  that  village  wedding,  kept 
between  four  brown  walls,  where  an  awkward  bridegroom  opens 
the  dance  with  a  high-shouldered,  broad-faced  bride,  while  elder- 
ly and  middle-aged  friends  look  on,  with  very  irregular  noses  and 
lips,  and  probably  with  quart-pots  in  their  hands,  but  with  an  ex- 
pression of  unmistakable  contentment  and  good  will.  '  Foh  ! ' 
says  my  idealistic  friend,  '  what  vulgar  details !  What  good  is 
there  in  taking  all  these  pains  to  give  an  exact  likeness  of  old 
women  and  clowns?  What  a  losv  phase  of  life  !  —  What  clumsy, 
ugly  people  !  '  But,  bless  us,  things  may  be  lovable  that  are  not 
altogether  handsome,  I  hope." — Adam  Bede. 

"  '  Well !  I'll  not  stick  at  giving  myself  trouble  to  put  down  such 
hypocritical  cant,'  said  Mr.  Tomlinson,  the  rich  miller.  '  I  know 
well  enough  what  your  Sunday  evening  lectures  are  good  for — for 
wenches  to  meet  their  sweethearts  and  brew  mischief.  There's 
work  enough  with  the  servant-maids  as  it  is — such  as  I  never 
heard  the  like  of  in  my  mother's  time,  and  it's  all  along  o'  your 
schooling  and  new-fangled  plans.  Give  me  a  servant  as  can 
nayther  read  or  write,  I  say,  and  doesn't  know  the  year  o'  the 
Lord  as  she  was  born  in.  I  should  like  to  know  what  good  those 
Sunday-schools  have  done,  now.  Why,  the  boys  used  to  go 
birds'-nesting  on  a  Sunday  morning  ;  and  a  capital  thing  too — 
ask  any  farmer  ;  and  a  very  pretty  thing  it  was  to  see  the  strings 
o'  heggs  hanging  up  in  poor  people's  houses.  You'll  not  see  'em 
nowhere  now." — Janet's  Repentance. 

3.  Broad  Sympathy — Tolerance. — "  In  largeness  of 
Christian  charity,  in  breadth  of  human  sympathy,  in  tenderness 
toward  all  human  frailty  that  is  not  vitally  base  and  self-seek- 
ing, in  subtle  power  of  finding  '  a  soul  of  goodness  '  in  things 
apparently  evil,  she  has  not  many  equals,  certainly  no  supe- 
rior, in  the  writers  of  the  day.  .  .  .  Self-sacrifice  as  the 
divine  law  of  life  and  its  only  fulfilment ;  self-sacrifice,  not 
in  some  ideal  sphere  sought  out  for  ourselves  in  the  vain  spirit 
of  self-pleasing,  but  wherever  God  has  placed  us,  amid  homely, 
petty  anxieties,  loves,  and  sorrows  ;  the  aiming  at  the  highest 
attainable  good  in  our  own  place,  irrespective  of  all  results  of 


582  GEORGE   ELIOT 

joy  or  sorrow,  of  apparent  success  or  failure — such  is  the 
lesson  that  begins  to  be  conveyed  to  us  in  George  Eliot's 
'  Clerical  Scenes.'  The  lesson  comes  to  us  in  the  quiet,  unself- 
ish love,  the  sweet  hourly  self-devotion  of  the  •  Milly '  of 
'  Amos  Barton,'  so  touchingly  pure  and  full  that  it  never  rec- 
ognizes itself  as  self-devotion  at  all." — J.  C.  Brown. 

"  George  Eliot  has  wide-ranging  sympathies  as  well  as  large 
discourse  of  reason ;  ...  all  her  faculties  and  qualities 
are  but  the  varying  expression  of  one  large,  noble,  and  opulent 
nature."— j£.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Her  sympathy  with  all  classes  was  wide,  and  proceeded 
from  the  general  source  of  all  such  sympathy — thorough  in- 
sight into  their  modes  of  thought  and  life.  .  .  .  Herself 
an  unbeliever,  George  Eliot  could  do  justice  to  those  of  in- 
tense religious  convictions,  analyzing  and  describing  them  in 
a  way  which  showed  that  she  thoroughly  understood  them." 
H.  J.  Nicoll. 

"  All  writers  but  the  greatest — a  Shakespeare,  a  Goethe, 
a  Scott,  a  George  Eliot — take  interest  in  their  own  class, 
their  own  co-religionists  alone.  The  others  of  whom  they 
speak  come  in  as  supernumeraries  on  the  stage  to  fill  up  the 
background  of  the  picture  ;  but  those  who  bring  them  seem 
not  to  consider  whether  they  are  men  and  women  with  human 
hearts  or  mere  marionettes.  But  the  great  writer  shows  that 
even  that  the  humblest  'if  you  prick  them  will  bleed,'  and 
discovers  the  touch  of  goodness  in  the  most  unpromising 
characters — in  poor  little  Hetty,  in  sensuous,  pleasure-loving 
Arthur  Donnithorne  as  well  as  in  Dinah  and  Mr.  Irwine. 
We  find  in  her  the  most  marvellous  power  of  putting 
herself  in  the  position  of  the  holders  of  all  creeds,  so  deep 
was  her  sympathy  with  every  form  in  which  the  religious  in- 
stincts have  expressed  themselves.  The  simple  faith,  half 
pagan  but  altogether  reverent,  of  Dolly  Winthrop;  the  sen- 
sible matter-of-fact  and  honorable  morality  of  Mr.  Irwine ; 
the  aspirations  of  a  modern  St.  Theresa ;  the  passionate  fer- 


GEORGE   ELIOT  583 

vor  of  Dinah,  supplying  by  sympathy  all  that  was  lacking  in 
external  culture  —  were  understood  and  reverenced  by  her. 
The  painful  bliss  of  asceticism,  the  rapture  of  Cath- 
olic devotion,  the  satisfaction  that  comes  of  self-abnegation, 
were  realized  by  her  as  though  she  had  been  a  fervid  Catholic, 
although  the  ground -tone  of  her  thought  was  essentially  and 
intensely  Protestant." — C.  K.  Paul. 

"Among  artists  who,  with  Shakespeare,  unite  breadth  of 
sympathy  with  power  of  interpreting  the  rarer  and  more  in- 
tense experiences  of  the  souls  of  men,  George  Eliot  must  be 
placed.  .  .  .  Her  sympathy  spreads  with  a  powerful  and 
even  flow  in  every  direction.  Hetty,  with  her  little  butter- 
fly soul,  pleasure-loving,  not  passionate,  luxurious,  vain,  hard 
of  heart,  is  viewed  with  the  sincerest,  most  intelligent  sym- 
pathy. Tito  is  condemned,  decreed  to  death,  but  he  is  un- 
derstood far  too  truly  to  be  an  object  of  hatred.  Tessa,  the 
pretty  pigeon,  Hinda,  who  has  little  more  soul  than  a  squir- 
rel, are  lovable  after  their  kind  ;  and  up  from  these  characters 
through  the  hierarchy  of  human  characters  to  Romola  and 
Fedalma,  to  Zarca  and  Savonarola,  there  is  not  one  grade  too 
low,  not  one  too  high  for  love  to  reach." — Edward Dowden. 

"  She  does  not  aspire  to  paint  irreproachable  characters 
but  characters  in  which  good  and  evil  are  mixed,  for  which 
we  feel  attachment  even  while  we  condemn  them." — Edmond 
Scherer. 

"There  is  a  character  in  'As  You  Like  It'  who  is  de- 
scribed as  being  able  to  find 

'  — tongues  in  trees,  books  in  the  running  brooks, 
Sermons  in  stones,  and  good  in  everything.' 

Such  a  person  we  should  imagine  George  Eliot  to  be  ;  .  .  . 
it  is  impossible  to  take  up  any  of  her  works  without  being 
struck,  perhaps  primarily,  with  this  thought — how  truly  this 
writer  has  lived  and  felt  !  The  histories  she  has  written  are 
no  soulless  records ;  they  breathe  with  real,  warm  life ;  how 


584  GEORGE   ELIOT 

could  they  be  otherwise  when,  if  we  may  be  thus  expressed, 
their  author  is  so  proficient  with  the  stethoscope  of  the  human 
heart  ?  Romola,  Tito,  Adam  Bede,  Silas  Marner,  Maggie 
Tulliver  are  not  mere  names  ;  they  are  existences  as  positive 
and  as  palpable  as  our  own.  We  have  had  their  souls  laid 
bare  before  us.  In  very  few  writers  has  this  marvellous  fac- 
ulty of  penetration  been  so  powerful.  And  it  is  the  product 
of  the  intensely  sympathetic  nature  which  the  author  pos- 
sesses."—^. B.  Smith. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  is  with  men  as  with  trees  :  if  you  lop  off  their  finest 
branches,  into  which  they  are  pouring  their  young  life  juice,  the 
wounds  will  be  healed  over  with  some  rough  boss,  some  old  excres- 
cence ;  and  what  might  have  been  a  grand  tree,  expanding  into 
liberal  shade,  is  but  a  whimsical,  misshapen  trunk.  Many  an  irri- 
tating fault,  many  an  unlovely  oddity,  has  come  of  hard  sorrow, 
which  has  crushed  or  maimed  the  nature  just  when  it  was  expand- 
ing into  plenteous  beauty  ;  and  the  trivial  erring  life  which  we 
visit  with  our  harsh  blame  may  be  but  as  the  unsteady  motion  of 
a  man  whose  best  limb  is  withered." — Mr.  Gil/it's  Love-Story. 

"  I  rarely  see  a  bent  old  man  or  a  wizened  old  woman  without 
seeing  the  past  of  which  they  are  the  shrunken  remnant ;  and 
the  unfinished  romance  of  rosy  cheeks  and  bright  eyes  seems 
sometimes  of  feeble  interest  and  significance  compared  with  that 
drama  of  hope  and  love  which  has  reached  its  catastrophe  long 
ago  and  left  the  poor  soul,  like  a  dim  and  dusty  stage,  with  all 
its  sweet  garden  scenes  and  fair  perspectives  overturned  and 
thrust  out  of  sight." — Amos  Barton. 

"  But,  my  good  friend,  what  will  you  do  with  your  fellow-par- 
ishioner who  opposes  your  husband  in  the  vestry  ?  with  your 
newly-appointed  vicar,  whose  style  of  preaching  you  find  pain- 
fully below  that  of  his  regretted  predecessor  ?  with  the  honest 
servant  who  worries  your  soul  with  her  one  failing  ? — with  your 
neighbor,  Mrs.  Green,  who  was  really  kind  to  you  in  your  last 
illness,  but  has  said  several  ill-natured  things  about  you  since 
your  convalescence  ? — nay,  with  your  excellent  husband  himself, 
who  has  other  irritating  habits  besides  that  of  not  wiping  his 


GEORGE   ELIOT  $85 

shoes  ?  These  fellow-mortals,  every  one,  must  be  accepted  as 
they  are  :  you  can  neither  straighten  their  noses  nor  brighten 
their  wit  nor  rectify  their  dispositions  ;  and  it  is  these  people — 
amongst  whom  your  life  is  passed — that  it  is  needful  you  should 
tolerate,  pity,  and  love  ;  it  is  these  more  or  less  ugly,  stupid, 
inconsistent  people  whose  movements  of  goodness  you  should  be 
able  to  admire — for  whom  you  should  cherish  all  possible  hopes, 
all  possible  patience." — Adam  Bede. 

4.  Power  of  Portraiture — Range. — "  In  depicting 
human  life  her  power  of  characterization  stoops  to  the  humblest 
and  rises  to  the  loftiest  types  of  human  character.  It  ranges 
from  Mrs.  Poyser  to  Dorothea  Brooke  ;  from  the  frivolous 
Hetty  to  the  superb  Gwendolen  ;  from  the  mentally  impris- 
oned rustic  worthies  who  gather  at  the  ale-house  in  Raveloe 
to  the  crowd  of  emancipated  mechanics  who  fearlessly  debate 
all  questions  in  their  London  tavern  club ;  from  representa- 
tives of  religious  prudence,  provident  even  in  their  hesitating 
trust  in  Providence,  all  the  way  up  to  such  embodiments 
of  the  fervors  and  exaltations  of  religious  genius  as  Dinah  in 
'  Adam  Bede '  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Lyon  in  '  Felix  Holt '  and 
Mordecai  in  '  Daniel  Deronda.'" — E.  P.  \VJiipple. 

"  George  Eliot  succeeded  remarkably  in  some  male  por- 
traits, yet  her  men  are  often  simply  women  in  disguise.  The 
piquancy,  for  example,  of  the  famous  character  of  Tito  is 
greatly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  is  the  voluptuous  but  sensitive 
character,  not  unfamiliar  in  the  fiction  which  deals  with  so- 
cial intrigues,  but  generally  presented  to  us  in  feminine  cos- 
tume. We  are  told  of  Daniel  Deronda  that  he  combined  a 
feminine  affectionateness  with  masculine  inflexibility.  To 
our  perceptions,  the  feminine  vein  becomes  decidedly  the 
most  prominent,  and  this  equally  true  of  such  characters  as 
Philip  Wakem  and  Mr.  Lyon." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  If  she  did  not  absolutely  excel  all  her  contemporaries  in 
the  revelation  of  the  human  mind  and  the  creation  of  new 
human  beings,  at  least  she  was  second  to  none  in  those  dis- 


586  GEORGE   ELIOT 

tinguishing  characteristics  of  genius.  .  .  .  The  pictures 
of  the  village,  etc.,  in  '  Amos  Barton  '  are  as  perfect  a  work 
of  genius  as  was  ever  given  to  the  world.  .  .  .  The 
author  had  conceived  that  shining  figure  [the  clergyman  in 
'  Janet's  Repentance  ']  coldly  as  a  mere  specimen  and  not 
with  any  sympathy  in  his  fate.  .  .  .  Nothing  can  ex- 
ceed in  real  power  the  picture  of  the  attractive  villain  Tito, 
so  thoroughly  base  of  nature,  so  tortuous,  so  lovable  and 
beautiful  on  the  outside,  so  amiable  and  so  remorseless  at  once, 
which  is  drawn  by  the  author  with  a  concentrated  passion  as 
of  some  actual  person  whom  she  hated  and  pursued  through 
every  trick  and  wile,  never  leaving  till  the  last  pang  of  dis- 
honored and  miserable  death,  to  which  she  drives  him  with  a 
fierce  joy  in  his  last  agonies." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  George  Eliot  can  make  her  dullest  people  interesting  and 
dramatically  effective.  She  can  paint  two  dull  people  with 
quite  different  ways  of  dulness;  .  .  .  and  you  are  aston- 
ished to  find  how  utterly  distinct  the  two  kinds  of  stupidity 
are  and  how  intensely  amusing  both  can  be  made." — Justin 
McCarthy. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  is  of  little  use  for  me  to  tell  you  that  Hetty's  cheek  was 
like  a  rose  petal,  that  dimples  played  about  her  pouting  lips,  that 
her  large  dark  eyes  hid  a  soft  roguishness  under  their  long  lashes, 
and  that  her  curly  hair,  though  all  gathered  back  under  her  round 
cap  while  she  was  at  work,  stole  back  in  dark  delicate  rings  on 
her  forehead  and  about  her  white,  shell-like  ears  ;  it  is  of  little  use 
for  me  to  say  how  lovely  was  the  contour  of  her  pink  and  white 
neckerchief  tucked  into  her  low,  plum-colored  stuff  bodice,  or 
how  the  linen  butter-making  apron,  with  its  bib,  seemed  a  thing 
to  be  imitated  in  silk  by  duchesses,  since  it  fell  in  such  charming 
lines,  or  how  her  brown  stockings  and  thick-soled,  buckled  shoes 
lost  all  that  clumsiness  which  they  must  certainly  have  had  when 
empty  of  her  foot  and  ankle  ; — of  little  use  unless  you  have  seen 
a  woman  who  affected  you  as  Hetty  affected  her  beholders ;  for 
otherwise,  though  you  might  conjure  up  the  image  of  a  lovely 


GEORGE   ELIOT  587 

woman,  she  would  not  in  the  least  resemble  that  distracting,  kit- 
ten-like maiden." — Adam  Bede. 

"  She  was  a  lovely  woman — Mrs.  Amos  Barton  ;  a  large,  fair, 
gentle  Madonna,  with  thick  close  chestnut  curls  beside  her  well- 
rounded  cheeks  and  with  large,  tender,  short-sighted  eyes.  The 
flowing  lines  of  her  tall  figure  made  the  simplest  dress  look  grace- 
ful. .  .  .  Among  strangers  she  was  shy  and  tremulous  as  a 
girl  of  fifteen  ;  she  blushed  crimson  if  any  one  appealed  to  her 
opinion  ;  yet  that  tall  graceful  substantial  presence  was  so  im- 
posing in  its  mildness  that  men  spoke  to  her  with  an  agreeable 
sensation  of  timidity."— A  mas  Barton. 

"She  [Mrs.  Transome]  worked  lightly,  for  her  figure  was  thin 
and  finely  formed,  though  she  was  between  fifty  and  sixty.  She 
was  a  tall,  proud-looking  woman,  with  abundant  gray  hair,  dark 
eyes  and  eyebrows,  and  a  somewhat  eagle-like  yet  not  unfeminine 
face.  Her  tight-fitting  black  dress  was  much  worn  ;  the  fine  lace 
of  her  cuffs  and  collar  and  of  the  small  veil  which  fell  backward 
over  her  high  comb,  was  visibly  mended ;  but  rare  jewels  flashed 
on  her  hands,  which  lay  on  her  folded  black-clad  arms  like  finely 
cut  onyx  cameos." — Felix  Holt. 

"  Cecco  was  a  wild-looking  figure  ;  a  very  ragged  tunic,  made 
shaggy  and  variegated  by  cloth-dust  and  clinging  fragments  of 
wool,  gave  relief  to  a  pair  of  long  arms  and  a  long  and  sinewy 
neck  ;  his  square  jaw  shaded  by  a  bristly  black  beard,  his  bridge- 
less  nose  and  low  forehead,  made  his  face  look  as  if  it  had  been 
crushed  down  for  the  purpose  of  packing,  and  a  narrow  piece  of 
red  rag  tied  over  his  ears  seemed  to  assist  in  the  compression." 
— Romola. 

5.  Wide  Erudition — Occasional  Pedantry — Sci- 
entific Imagery. — "  In  sobriety,  breadth,  and  massiveness 
of  understanding,  in  familiar  acquaintance  with  the  latest  de- 
monstrated truths  of  physical,  historical,  economic,  and  meta- 
physical science,  and  in  the  capacity  to  use  these  truths  as 
materials  for  a  philosophy  of  nature  and  human  nature,  this 
woman  is  the  acknowledged  peer  of  such  men  as  John  Stuart 
Mill  and  Herbert  Spencer.  .  .  .  This  general  largeness 
of  mind,  this  tranquil  grasp  of  the  outlying  problems  of  hu- 


588  GEORGE   ELIOT  * 

man  life  and  human  destiny,  distinguished  her  from  all  the 
other  novelists  of  the  age  ;  for  she  not  only  looks  at  things 
and  into  things,  but  she  looks  through  things  to  the  laws  of 
life  they  illustrate  and  by  which  they  are  governed." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"Her  books  have  a  strong  tendency  toward  erudition.  She 
amassed  knowledge  throughout  her  whole  life.  She  knew 
all:  she  read  all  with  a  marvellous  discrimination.  .  .  . 
Replete  with  learning,  weighted  wjth  knowledge  in  every 
page,  the  finish  is  so  rare  that  the  joints  between  erudition 
and  imagination  cannot  be  discerned." — Oscar  Browning. 

"  Rarely  has  the  novelist  come  to  his  task  with  such  far- 
reaching  culture  as  George  Eliot.  We  have  seen  her  girlhood 
occupied  with  an  extraordinary  variety  of  studies ;  we  have 
seen  her  plunged  in  abstruse  metaphysical  speculations  ;  we 
have  seen  her  translating  some  of  the  most  laborious  philo- 
sophical investigations  of  German  thinkers ;  we  have  seen  her 
again  translating  from  the  Latin  the  '  Ethics '  of  Spinoza ; 
and  finally  we  have  seen  her  attracting  and  attracted  by  some 
of  the  leaders  in  science,  philosophy,  and  literature. 
Occasionally  she  moves  somewhat  heavily  under  the  vast 
weight  of  erudition.  .  .  .  Now  and  then  [her  writings] 
are  not  without  a  trace  of  cumbrousness  and  pedantry." 
— M.  Blind. 

"To  carry  ethical  purpose  and  erudition  into  art  is  indeed 
a  perilous  undertaking,  wherein  but  one  or  two  of  the  greatest 
have  succeeded.  .  .  .  That  George  Eliot's  success  is  far 
from  complete,  is  far  too  obvious." — Frederick  Harrison. 

"  Romola  is  a  magnificent  piece  of  '  cram.'  The  terrible 
masses  of  information  have  put  out  the  fire.  If  we  fail  to  per- 
ceive this  in  the  more  serious  passages,  it  is  painfully  evident 
in  those  meant  to  be  humourous  or  playful." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"The  habit  of  using  phrases  and  illustrations  borrowed 
from  science  grew  on  George  Eliot,  and  did  not  always  tend 
to  lucidity  :  thus,  in  the  first  sentence  of  '  Deronda,'  we  find 


GEORGE   ELIOT  589 

a  glance  mentioned  as  of  a  dynamic  quality — an  expression  of 
which  we  (though  not  destitute  of  some  tincture  of  dynamical 
instruction)  have  failed  to  this  day  to  see  the  applicability." 
— H.  E.  Henley. 

"  She  makes  frequent  use  of  her  large  learning  and  culture 
in  her  novels.  In  the  earlier  ones  a  Greek  quotation  is  to  be 
found  here  and  there,  while  in  the  later  ones  German  seems  to 
have  the  preference.  ...  In  the  '  Mill  on  the  Floss  '  she 
describes  Bob  Jakin's  thumb  as  '  a  singularly  broad  specimen 
of  that  difference  between  the  man  and  the  monkey.1  Such 
references  to  recent  scientific  speculations  are  not  infrequent. 
If  they  serve  to  show  the  tendencies  of  her  mind  toward 
knowledge  and  large  thought,  they  also  indicate  a  too  ready 
willingness  to  imbibe,  and  to  use  in  a  popular  manner,  what 
is  not  thoroughly  assimilated  truth." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"The  scientific  phraseology  to  which  he  himself  [Mr.  Lewes] 
was  more  or  less  sincerely  devoted  invaded  his  companion's 
writing  with  a  positive  contagion.  .  .  .  '  Felix  Holt'  and 
'  Middlemarch '  are  studies  of  immense  effort  and  erudition, 
not  unenlightened  by  humour,  but,  on  the  whole,  dead." — 
Saints  bury. 

"  Mrs.  Lewes  has  mastered  many  sciences  as  well  as  litera- 
tures. Probably  no  other  novel  writer  since  novel  writing 
became  a  business  ever  possessed  one  tithe  of  her  scientific 
knowledge.  .  .  .  She  is  all  genius  and  culture.  Had 
she  never  written  a  page  of  fiction,  nay,  had  she  never  written 
a  line  of  poetry  or  prose,  she  must  have  been  regarded  with 
wonder  and  admiration  by  all  who  knew  her  as  a  woman  of 
vast  and  varied  knowledge.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Lewes  has  made 
people  read  novels  who  perhaps  never  read  fiction  from  any 
other  pen.  .  .  .  She  has  made  the  novel  the  companion 
and  friend  and  study  of  scholars  and  thinkers  and  statesmen. 
Her  books  are  discussed  by  the  gravest  critics  as  productions 
of  the  highest  school  of  art.  .  .  .  Her  books  compel, 
they  extort  the  admiration  of  men  who  would  disparage  all 


59°  GEORGE   ELIOT 

novels,  if  they  could,  as  frivolous  and  worthless,  but  who  are 
forced  even  by  their  own  canons  and  principles  to  recognize 
the  clear  deep  thought,  the  noble  culture,  the  penetrating 
analytic  power  which  are  evident  in  almost  every  chapter. 
.  .  .  The  deep  philosophic  thought  of  George  Eliot's 
novels  enthuses  and  illumines  them  everywhere.  .  .  .  You 
feel  that  you  are  under  the  control  of  one  who  is  not  merely 
a  great  story-teller,  but  who  is  also  a  deep  thinker." — Justin 
McCarthy. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  In  Heine's  hands,  German  prose,  usually  so  heavy,  so  clumsy, 
so  dull,  becomes,  like  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  chemist,  compact, 
metallic,  brilliant ;  it  is  German  in  an  allotropic  condition." 
— Essay  in  the  Westminster  Review. 

"  When  the  fully  developed  insect  is  parasitic,  we  believe,  the 
larva  is  usually  parasitic  also  ;  and  we  shall  probably  not  be  far 
wrong  in  supposing  that  Young  at  Oxford,  as  elsewhere,  spent  a 
good  deal  of  time  in  hanging  about  possible  and  actual  patrons." 
—  IVorldliness  and  Other-  Worldliness. 

11  He  [Dr.  Doran]  has  ascertained  that  the  internal  emotions 
of  prebendaries  have  a  sacerdotal  quality,  and  that  the  very 
chyme  and  chyle  of  a  rector  are  conscious  of  the  gown  and  band. 
.  .  .  The  woman  of  large  capacities  can  seldom  rise  beyond 
the  absorption  of  ideas  ;  her  physical  conditions  refuse  to  support 
the  energy  required  for  spontaneous  activity  ;  the  voltaic  pile  is 
not  strong  enough  to  produce  crystallization." — WorldRness  and 
Other-  Worldliness. 

6.  Quiet,  Contemplative  Humor. — "  She  has  a  rich 
and  racy  humor,  sensitive  and  sober,  refined  and  delicate. 
She  does  not  caricature  folly  with  Dickens,  nor  laugh  at 
weakness  with  Thackeray  ;  but  she  shows  us  the  limitations 
of  life  in  such  a  manner  as  to  produce  the  finest  humor.  She 
is  never  grotesque  or  vulgar  ;  but  wise,  laughter-loving,  and 
sympathetic.  Her  humor  is  pure  and  homely  as  it  is  delicate 
and  exquisite ;  and  it  is  invariably  human  and  noble.  She 
has  an  intense  and  a  wonderful  appreciation  of  the  ludicrous, 


GEORGE   ELIOT  591 

sees  whatever  is  incongruous  in  life,  and  makes  her  laughter 
genial  and  joyous.  Her  humor  is  the  very  quintessence  of 
human  experience — strikes  deadly  blows  at  what  is  unjust  and 
untrue.  She  laughs  at  all,  but  sneers  at  no  one — for  she  has 
sympathy  with  all." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"George  Eliot  possessed  a  vein  of  humour  ...  in- 
comparably superior  in  depth  if  not  in  delicacy  to  that  of  any 
other  feminine  writer.  It  is  the  humour  of  a  calm,  contem- 
plative mind,  familiar  with  wide  fields  of  knowledge  and 
capable  of  observing  the  little  dramas  of  rustic  life  from  a 
higher  stand-point.  .  .  .  She  is  awake  to  those  quaint 
aspects  of  the  little  world  before  her  which  only  show  their 
quaintness  to  the  cultivated  intellect." — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Her  power  of  description  is  far  excelled  by  a  more  extra- 
ordinary endowment  still — viz.,  her  humor.  While  its  qual- 
ity is  scarcely  definable,  it  is  all  her  own,  as  in  the  case  of 
every  great  master.  .  .  .  It  is  like  a  silver  stream  mean- 
dering through  the  lovely  meadows  of  her  thought — bright, 
pleasant,  and  beautifying.  If  it  is  not  deep,  scathing,  or 
searching,  it  is  very  seldom  coarse.  .  .  .  We  laugh 
without  malice  at  the  foibles  of  her  creations  and  at  their  per- 
sonal idiosyncrasies.  Mrs.  Poyser  is,  in  her  way,  equal  to 
any  humorous  conception  in  the  language.  She  is  truer  than 
Mrs.  Gamp  and  quite  as  original.  Her  sayings  alone  suffice 
to  make  '  Adam  Bede '  one  of  the  most  mirth-suggestive  books 
in  the  language.  .  .  .  The  mirthfulness  does  not  consist 
of  jokes  but  rather  of  the  reproduction  of  the  quaintness  of 
human  nature,  and  the  appearance  is  so  perfect,  so  true,  that 
we  cannot  help  but  smile.  Mellower  than  that  of  almost  any 
other  author,  the  humor  is  also  as  tender  as  it  is  rich." — 
G.  B.  Smith. 

"  The  grotesque  in  human  character  is  reclaimed  from  the 
province  of  the  humorous  by  her  affections,  when  that  is  pos- 
sible, and  is  shown  to  be  a  pathetic  form  of  beauty.  Her 
humour  usually  belongs  to  her  entire  conception  of  character, 


592  GEORGE   ELIOT 

and  cannot  be  separated  from  it.  .  .  .  Her  humorous 
effects  are  secured  by  letting  her  mind  drop  sympathetically 
into  a  level  of  lower  intelligence,  or  duller  moral  perception, 
and  by  the  conscious  presence  at  the  same  time  of  the  higher 
self.  The  humorous  perception  exists  only  in  the  qualified 
organs  of  perception  which  remain  at  the  higher,  the  normal 
point  of  view.  .  .  .  George  Eliot's  humour  allies  itself 
with  her  intellect  on  the  one  hand  and  with  her  sympathies 
and  moral  perceptions  on  the  other.  ' — Edward  Dowden. 

"  Two  great  faculties  [she  had]  which  seem  mutually  ex- 
clusive and  which  in  her  writings  are  at  once  combined  and 
carried  to  an  extraordinary  pitch  of  power — the  pathos  which 
draws  tears  from  the  driest  eyes  and  the  most  abundant,  the 
most  amusing,  the  most  original  comedy." — Edmond  Scherer. 

"  George  Eliot's  inspiration  came  from  the  country,  where 
the  conventionalities,  which  are  even  more  rigid  than  in  the 
most  artificial  society,  are  so  patent  to  the  seeing  eye  that  the 
satirist  need  be  no  sharper  than  the  humorist  and  may  almost 
fulfil  his  office  lovingly.  .  .  .  Even  that  gift  of  humour 
in  which  it  had  been  so  often  confidently  asserted  that  the 
whole  female  sex  was  deficient,  was  seen  to  shine  out  in  this 
individual  with  the  warmest  suffusion  of  light  and  insight." 
— Mrs.  Oliphant. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  have  known  Mr.  Pilgrim  discover  the  most  unexpected  virt- 
ues in  a  patient  seized  with  a  promising  illness.  A  good  inflam- 
mation fired  his  enthusiasm,  and  a  lingering  dropsy  dissolved 
him  into  charity.  Gradually,  however,  as  his  patients  became 
convalescent,  his  view  of  their  character  became  more  dispas- 
sionate. When  they  could  relish  mutton-chops  he  began  to 
admit  that  they  had  foibles,  and  by  the  time  they  had  swal- 
lowed their  last  dose  of  tonic,  he  was  alive  to  their  most  inexcus- 
able faults."— Janet's  Repentance. 

"'  Good  day,  Mrs.  Poyser,'  said  the  old  Squire,  peering  out 
at  her  with  his  short-sighted  eyes — a  mode  of  looking  at  her 


GEORGE   ELIOT  593 

which,  as  Mrs.  Poyser  observed,  'allays  aggravated  her;  it  was 
as  if  you  was  a  insect,  and  he  was  a  goin'  to  dab  his  finger-nail 
on  you.'  However,  she  said,  'Your  servant,  sir,'  and  curtseyed 
with  an  air  of  perfect  deference  as  she  advanced  toward  him  : 
she  was  not  the  woman  to  misbehave  towards  her  betters  and 
fly  in  the  face  of  the  catechism  without  severe  provocation." — 
Adam  Bede. 

"  Time  out  of  mind  the  Raveloe  doctor  had  been  a  Kimble  ; 
Kimble  was  inherently  a  doctor's  name;  and  it  was  difficult  to 
contemplate  firmly  the  melancholy  fact  that  the  actual  Kimble 
had  no  son,  so  that  his  practice  might  one  day  be  handed  over  to 
a  successor  with  the  incongruous  name  of  Taylor  or  Johnson." 
— Silas  Marncr. 


7.  Pessimism — Despair — Melancholy. — "The  cen- 
tral point  of  George  Eliot's  philosophy  is  that  there  is  a 
continuity  in  action  which  cannot  be  broken,  and  that  noth- 
ing but  an  inflexible  regard  for  duty  and  a  perpetual  will- 
ingness to  sacrifice  our  own  happiness  to  supreme  moral 
purpose  or  to  the  happiness  of  others  can  save  the  individual 
life  from  shipwreck  or  mutilation.  She  never  shows  us  good 
springing  out  of  evil ;  mere  optimistic  folk  may  teach  that 
comforting  doctrine  ;  but  she  walks  in  the  light  of  common 
day  and  in  the  presence  of  the  unvarnished  realities  of  life, 
and  prefers  to  enforce  the  more  terrible  truth  that  evil  springs 
out  of  evil  and  can  produce  nothing  but  evil.  There  are  no 
arresting  angels  in  the  path  ;  healing  and  comforting  angels 
there  may  be,  but  the  bitter  consequences  of  wrong-doing 
must  lie  paid  to  the  uttermost  farthing  notwithstanding." — 
George  Dawson. 

"  There  is  wanting  in  George  Eliot's  books  that  freshness 
of  spirit,  that  faith  in  the  future,  and  that  peaceful  poise  of 
soul  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  Tennyson,  Rus- 
kin,  and  Browning.  Even  with  all  his  constitutional  cynicism 
and  despair,  the  teachings  of  Carlyle  are  much  more  hopeful 
than  hers.  An  air  of  world-weariness  and  fatigue  is  about  all 
38 


594  GEORGE  ELIOT 

her  work,  even  when  it  is  most  stimulating  with  its  altru- 
ism. Though  in  theory  not  a  pessimist,  yet  a  sense  of  pain 
and  sorrow  grows  out  of  the  touch  of  each  of  her  books. 
.  .  .  She  was  art  agnostic  ;  life  had  no  wide  horizon  for 
her.  The  world  was  bounded  to  her  vision,  rounded  into  the 
little  capacity  possessed  by  man.  Where  others  would  have 
cast  a  glow  of  hope  and  sunset  brilliance,  promise  of  a  brighter 
day  yet  to  dawn  over  the  closing  scenes  of  her  novels,  she 
could  see  nothing  beyond  but  the  feeble  effect  of  an  earthly 
transmitted  good.  .  .  .  George  Eliot  leaves  us  with  a 
feeling  that  we  know  nothing  and  can  hope  for  but  little." 
— G.  W.  Cooke. 

"When  Tom  and  Maggie  sink  in  the  hurrying  Floss  there 
is  left  an  aching  sense  of  abrupt  incompleteness,  of  imperious 
suspension,  of  intolerable  arrest ;  and  with  this  a  sense  of  the 
utter  helplessness  of  our  extremest  longings.  The  musician's 
hand  has  broken  the  movement  in  the  midst,  and  it  can  never 
be  taken  up  again.  This  is  cruel  to  all  our  tender  desires  for 
joy.  But  there  is  something  more  dreadful.  When  the 
heavens  break  up  over  the  head  of  Silas  Marner,  when  the 
lots  declare  him,  the  innocent  man,  guilty  in  the  midst  of  the 
Lantern  Yard  ;  when  he  goes  out  with  despair  in  his  soul, 
with  shaken  trust  in  God  and  man,  to  live  for  weary  years  a 
life  of  unsocial  and  godless  isolation,  accumulating  his  hoard 
of  yellow  pieces,  the  tragedy  is  deeper.  When  the  beautiful 
Greek  awakes  from  his  swoon  beside  the  Arno  to  find  no  soli- 
tary lair,  but  the  vindictive  eyes  of  Baldassare  looking  down  at 
him  and  the  eager  knuckles  at  his  throat,  the  real  piteousness 
and  terror  is  not  that  a  young  man  is  about  to  die,  but  that  now 
the  visible  seal  of  finality  is  to  be  set  upon  that  death  of  the 
soul  which  had  already  taken  place." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  If  I  insist  on  the  kind  of  pitifulness  with  which  George 
Eliot  considers  our  earthly  state,  it  is  because  this  disposition 
is  what  in  reality  constitutes  the  main  principle  of  her  art. 
All  great  wit  draws  inspiration  from  some  philosophy  or  other, 


GEORGE   ELIOT  595 

and  the  philosophy  of  George  Eliot  is  a  gently  sad  one. 
There  reigns  in  it  what  Wordsworth,  in  a  beautiful  line,  calls 

'The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity,' 

the  melancholy  note  which  human  destiny  gives  out. 
The  sadness  which  creeps  over  us  in  view  of  human  imperfec- 
tions is  nothing  to  that  darkness  which  enters  the  soul  when 
the  peculiar  philosophical  opinions  of  this  gifted  woman  are 
insidiously  but  powerfully  introduced.  .  .  .  She  was 
steeped  in  the  doctrines  of  modern  pessimistic  agnosticism. 
.  .  .  Future  life  is  no  certainty ;  hope  in  redemption  is 
buried  in  a  sepulchre  ;  life  in  most  cases  is  a  futile  struggle. 
.  .  .  Thus  she  discourses  like  a  Pagan. " — Edmond  Scherer. 
"Undoubtedly  one  of  the  prominent  abiding  impressions 
left  upon  us  is  her  sadness.  She  is  touched  with  a  profound 
sorrow  for  the  whole  human  race  ;  she  individualizes  human- 
ity, and  declares  it  to  be  miserable  and  unhappy.  Her  books 
are  almost  overweighted  with  sadness.  .  .  .  Do  what 
she  will,  the  burden  is  ever  present  to  her,  and  even  in  the 
most  humorous  passages  in  her  novels  .  .  .  the  wit  is 
now  and  again  tinged  with  bitterness,  and  more  frequently 
still  with  melancholy.  .  .  .  And  yet  this  sadness,  from 
whose  power  over  her  genius  the  author  is  not  able  to  get 
clear,  is  very  beautiful.  It  is  only  the  good  or  the  great  who 
know  how  to  be  sad.  The  sadness  of  a  philanthropist  or  a 
philosopher  is  a  very  deep  feeling — one  of  the  strongest  of  all 
emotions.  George  Eliot  is  a  mixture  of  the  two.  She  per- 
ceives the  weight  of  human  misery,  and  her  powerlessness  to 
lift  it  from  the  mind  affects  her  greatly.  .  .  .  The  de- 
spair surrounding  the  characters  of  George  Eliot  is  the  result 
of  hopelessness.  The  miserable  whining  tone  is  absent;  the 
tragedy  here  is  not  simulated  but  real.  The  principal  suf- 
ferers are  those  who  have  heroically  striven,  and  who  bear 
about  them  the  evidences  of  the  struggle.  .  .  .  It  is  in- 


596  GEORGE   ELIOT 

teresting  to  notice  how  this  sadness  of  George  Eliot  . 
seems  to  have  deepened  with  the  years.  Each  book,  as  it 
was  issued,  .  .  .  has  shown  a  gradual  growth  of  the 
feeling  till  it  appears  to  have  culminated  in  '  Middlemarch.' 
Now  there  is  no  hope.  At  first,  through  the  sadness  there 
gleamed  the  bright  star  of  faith.  But  it  would  almost  seem  at 
length  to  be  quenched  in  midnight.  .  .  .  It  is  such 
looking  for  the  light  and  not  apprehending  it  which  has  be- 
gotten in  all  readers  such  a  sublime  pity  for  her." — G.  B. 
Smith. 

11  To  me  George  Eliot's  whole  career  seems  to  be  all  of  a 
piece — she  conceded  everything  to  doubt.  She  conceded  too 
much  to  temptation,  perhaps  rather  from  a  strong  sense  of  the 
hopelessness  of  holding  high  ground  than  of  any  inability  of 
holding  it  after  she  had  taken  it.  ...  She  struggled  on 
in  gloom,  sometimes  in  despair,  to  convince  mankind  that 
their  own  clear  duty  is  to  be  more  pitiful  to  each  other's 
faults.  .  .  .  The  inexpressible  sadness  of  the  works  of 
George  Eliot  is  one  characteristic  which  has  deeply  impressed 
us.  ...  The  stern  mournfulness  of  these  books  gives  us 
the  idea  of  one  who  does  not  know  or  who  has  forgotten  that 
the  stone  was  rolled  from  the  heart  of  the  world  on  the  morn- 
ing when  Christ  came." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"What  a  glad  world  this  looks  like,  as  one  drives  or  rides  along 
the  valleys  or  over  the  hills  !  .  .  .  [One]  would  not  know 
that,  hidden  behind  the  apple-blossoms  or  among  the  golden  corn 
or  under  the  shrouding  boughs  of  the  wood  there  might  be  a  human 
heart  beating  heavily  with  anguish — perhaps  a  young  blooming 
girl,  not  knowing  where  to  turn  for  refuge  from  swift-advancing 
shame  ;  understanding  no  more  of  this  life  of  ours  than  a  foolish 
lost  lamb  ;  wandering  farther  and  farther  in  the  nightfall  on  the 
lonely  heath,  yet  tasting  the  bitterest  of  life's  bitterness.  Such 
things  are  sometimes  hidden  among  the  sunny  fields  and  behind 
the  blossoming  orchards  ;  and  the  sound  of  the  gurgling  brook,  if 


GEORGE   ELIOT  597 

you  came  close  to  one  spot,  behind  a  small  bush,  would  be  mingled 
with  a  despairing  sob.  No  wonder  man's  religion  has  much  sor- 
row in  it;  no  wonder  he  needs  a  suffering  God." — Adam  Bede, 

"  There  are  so  many  things  wrong  and  difficult  in  the  world 
that  no  man  can  be  great — he  can  hardly  keep  himself  from 
wickedness — unless  he  gives  up  thi-nking  much  about  pleasures 
or  rewards  and  gets  strength  to  endure  what  is  hard  and  painful. 
If  you  mean  to  act  nobly  and  to  seek  to  know  the  best 
things  God  has  put  within  reach  of  man,  you  must  learn  to  fix 
your  mind  on  that  end  and  not  on  what  will  happen  to  you  be- 
cause of  it.  And  remember,  if  you  were  to  choose  something 
lower  and  make  it  the  rule  of  your  life  to  seek  your  own  pleasure 
and  to  escape  from  what  is  disagreeable,  calamity  might  come 
just  the  same ;  and  it  would  be  calamity  falling  on  a  base  mind, 
which  is  one  form  of  sorrow  that  has  no  balm  in  it  and  that  may 
well  make  a  man  say,  '  It  would  have  been  better  for  me  if  I  had 
never  been  born.'" — Romola. 

"  We  are  impressed  with  the  broad  sameness  of  the  human  lot, 
which  never  alters  in  the  main  headings  of  its  history — hunger 
and  labor,  seed-time  and  harvest,  love  and  death." — Romola. 


8.  Deep    Religious    Feeling — Moral    Purpose.— 

"  George  Eliot  never  sinned  against  the  natural  piety  which 
should  bind  our  days  together.  The  tender  regard  which  she 
had  for  all  the  surroundings  of  her  youth  did  not  fail  toward 
those  whose  teaching  had  once  roused  her  reverence  and 
who  could  never  become  the  objects  of  indiscriminate  antip- 
athy. ' '  — Leslie  Stephen. 

"  That  the  mind  of  her  who  penned  these  novels  was  pro- 
foundly religious,  no  reader  can  doubt.  .  .  .  When  we 
attempt,  however,  to  define  the  religion  in  which  George 
Eliot  rested  our  task  becomes  difficult.  We  find  in  her  the 
most  marvellous  power  of  putting  herself  in  the  position  of 
the  holders  of  all  creeds,  so  wide  was  her  sympathy  ;  but  she 
seldom  revealed  her  own  religious  views  in  her  novels." — 
C.  K.  Paul. 

"  She  was  distinctively  a  moral  teacher  in  her  books.     The 


598  GEORGE  ELIOT 

novel  was  never  to  her  a  work  of  art  alone.  She  believed  that 
man  can  find  happiness  and  true  culture  only  in  a  moral  life. 
.  .  .  She  was  one  of  the  most  ardent  preachers  of  the 
moral  life ;  her  books  are  crowded  with  teaching  of  the  most 
positive  character." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  At  the  root  of  George  Eliot's  genius  lay  an  extraordinarily 
deep  and  ever-present  sense  of  the  significance  of  human  ex- 
istence. Her  relations  with  the  world  in  which  she  found 
herself,  both  with  its  past  and  its  present,  pressed  so  incessantly 
and  so  forcibly  on  the  springs  of  interest  and  curiosity  that 
there  seems  to  have  been  hardly  a  moment  when  she  was  not 
observing,  speculating,  or  analyzing  and  recording  the  re- 
sults. The  world  within  and  the  world  without  never  ceased 
to  be,  for  her,  wonderlands." — E.  W.  Henley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  With  that  cry  of  self-despair,  Maggie  fell  on  her  knees  against 
the  table  and  buried  her  sorrow-stricken  face.  Her  faith  went 
out  to  the  Unseen  Pity  that  would  be  with  her  to  the  end.  Surely, 
there  was  something  being  taught  her  by  this  experience  of  great 
need,  and  she  must  be  learning  a  secret  of  human  tenderness  and 
long-suffering  that  the  less  erring  could  hardly  know." — Mill  on 
the  Floss. 

"  It  is  only  a  poor  sort  of  happiness  that  could  ever  come  by 
caring  about  our  own  narrow  pleasures.  We  can  only  have  the 
highest  happiness,  such  as  goes  along  with  being  a  great  man, 
by  having  wide  thoughts  and  much  feeling  for  the  rest  of  the 
world  as  well  as  ourse-lves  ;  and  this  sort  of  happiness  often  brings 
so  much  pain  with  it  that  we  can  only  tell  it  from  pain  by  its 
being  what  we  would  choose  before  everything  else  because  our 
souls  see  it  is  good." — Romola. 

"  Whatever  might  be  the  weaknesses  of  the  ladies  who  pruned 
the  luxuriances  of  their  lace  and  ribbons,  cut  out  garments  for 
the  poor,  distributed  tracts,  quoted  Scripture,  and  defined  the 
true  Gospel,  they  had  learned  this — that  there  was  a  divine  work 
to  be  done  in  life,  a  rule  of  goodness  higher  than  the  opinion  of 
their  neighbors ;  and  if  the  notion  of  a  heaven  in  reserve  for 


GEORGE  ELIOT  599 

themselves  was  a  little  too  prominent,  yet  the  theory  of  fitness 
for  that  heaven  consisted  in  purity  of  heart,  in  Christ-like  com- 
passion, in  the  subduing  of  selfish  desires.  They  might  give  the 
name  of  piety  to  much  that  was  only  puritanic  egoism  ;  they 
might  call  many  things  sin  that  were  not  sin  ;  but  they  had  at 
least  the  feeling  that  sin  was  to  be  avoided  and  resisted  ;  and 
color-blindness,  which  may  mistake  drab  for  scarlet,  is  better 
than  total  blindness." — Scenes  of  Clerical  Life. 

9.  Picturesque  Description  of  Rural  Life  and 
Scenery. — "This  characteristic  may  include  but  is  not  iden- 
tical with  her  preference  for  homely  types.  So  vivid  is  her 
description  of  rural  life  that  the  tale  is  really  an  historical 
painting,  .  .  .  to  be  valued  as  an  accurate  delineation 
rather  than  an  imaginary  scene." — -John  Lord. 

"  An  English  landscape  in  the  manner  of  Constable,  rich 
with  rough  soft  color  and  infallible  in  local  truth,  is  first  pre- 
sented. The  life  of  the  whole  neighborhood  grows  up  before 
us;  and  from  this  the  principal  characters  never  altogether 
detach  themselves." — Edward Dowden. 

"  So  graphically  are  the  various  scenes  and  persons  of  '  Mid- 
dlemarch '  brought  before  our  eyes  that  we  seem  to  know  the 
borough  town  thoroughly.  We  are  familiar  with  its  people, 
and  could  walk  in  and  out  amongst  them  and  through  the 
streets  without  any  doubt  or  difficulty.  .  .  .  Easy  and 
natural,  she  can  describe  a  farm-house  with  as  minute  and 
faithful  a  pencil  as  she  can  draw  character.  Nothing  escapes 
her,  and  her  power  is  equally  great  over  the  aggregate  and 
the  single.  The  scenery  of  the  Midlands  does  not  afford  scope 
for  sublime  descriptions  ;  the  massive  is  almost  entirely  absent, 
but  the  beautiful  is  everywhere,  and  of  this  George  Eliot  is 
cognizant.  .  .  .  Take  the  sketches  of  Raveloe,  Milby, 
Shepparton,  and  others — where  can  there  be  found  more  ac- 
curate painting?  The  author  has  been  the  connecting  link 
between  us  and  that  village  life  which  we  can  never  forget. 
There  are  scenes  and  places  hit  off  by  only  just  a 


6OO  GEORGE   ELIOT 

few  words,  such  as  the  ride  to  Stone  Court,  where  a  Midland 
landscape,  in  all  its  quiet  beauty,  is  put  upon  the  canvas  ; 
everything  speaks  to  a  mind  like  the  author's.  The  language 
of  the  fields,  the  rivers,  and  the  woods  is  no  sealed  one  to  her. 
And  as  she  herself  says  of  those  aspects  of  scenery,  '  These  are 
the  things  which  make  the  gamut  of  joy  to  midland-bred  souls 
— the  things  they  toddled  among,  or  perhaps  learned  by 
heart  standing  between  their  father's  knees  while  he  drove 
leisurely.'  .  .  .  The  art  of  depicting  scenery  is  rarely 
found  in  a  very  eminent  degree,  and  certainly  seldom  in  those 
who  have  other  pronounced  qualifications  for  the  novelist. 
George  Eliot  is  one  of  the  few  who  possess  this  rare  gift." 
— G.  B.  Smith. 

"  How  perfect  is  that  vignette  of  Raveloe — '  a  village 
where  many  of  the  old  echoes  lingered,  undrowned  by  new 
voices  !  '  The  entire  picture  of  the  village  and  its  village  life 
a  hundred  years  ago  is  finished  with  the  musical  and  reserved 
note  of  poetry,  such  as  we  are  taught  to  love  in  Wordsworth 
and  Tennyson.  .  .  .  Modern  English  has  few  pieces  of  de- 
scription more  gem-like  in  its  crystalline  facets  than  the  open- 
ing chapter  that  tells  of  the  pale,  uncanny  weaver  of  Raveloe 
in  his  stone  cottage  by  the  deserted  pit.  Some  of  us  can  re- 
member such  house- weavers  in  such  lonesome  cottages  on  the 
Northern  moors,  and  have  heard  the  unfamiliar  rattle  of  the 
loom  in  a  half-ruinous  homestead." — Frederic  Harrison. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  afternoon  sun  was  warm  on  the  five  workmen  there  busy 
upon  doors  and  window- frames  and  wainscotings.  A  scent  of 
pine  wood  from  a  tent-like  pile  of  planks  outside  mingled  itself 
with  the  scent  of  the  elder  bushes,  which  were  spreading  their 
summer  snow  close  to  the  window  opposite ;  the  slanting  sun- 
beam shone  through  the  transparent  shavings  that  flew  before 
the  steady  plane,  and  lit  up  the  fine  grain  of  the  oak  panelling 
which  stood  propped  against  the  wall.  On  a  heap  of  those  soft 
shavings  a  rough  grey  shepherd  dog  had  made  himself  a  pleasant 


GEORGE   ELIOT  6oi 

bed,  and  was  lying  with  his  nose  between  his  fore-paws,  occasion- 
ally winking  his  brows  to  cast  a  glance  at  the  tallest  of  the  five 
workingmen,  who  was  carving  a  shield  in  the  center  of  a  wooden 
mantel-piece." — Adam  Bede. 

"  A  charming  picture  Cheverel  Manor  would  have  made  that 
evening,  if  some  English  Watteau  had  been  there  to  paint  it;  the 
castellated  house  of  grey  tinted  stone,  with  the  flecking  sunbeams 
sending  flashes  of  golden  light  across  the  many-shaped  panes  in 
the  mullioned  windows,  and  a  great  beech  leaning  athwart  one  of 
the  flanking  towers,  and  breaking  with  its  flattened  boughs  the 
too  formal  symmetry  of  the  front ;  the  broad  gravel  walk  wind- 
ing on  the  right  by  a  row  of  tall  pines  alongside  the  pool — on  the 
left  branching  out  among  swelling  grassy  mounds." — Scenes  from 
Clerical  Life, 

"  As  the  morning  silvered  the  meadows  with  their  long  lines  of 
bushy  willows  marking  the  water-courses,  or  burnished  the  golden 
corn-ricks  clustered  near  the  long  roofs  of  some  midland  home- 
stead, he  saw  the  full-uddered  cows  driven  from  their  pasture  to 
their  early  milking.  Perhaps  it  was  the  shepherd,  head  servant 
of  the  farm,  who  drove  them,  his  sheep-dog  following  with  a  heed- 
less, unofficial  air,  as  of  a  beadle  in  undress.  The  shepherd  with 
a  slow  and  slouching  walk,  timed  by  the  walk  of  grazing  beasts, 
moved  aside,  as  if  unwillingly  throwing  out  a  monosyllabic  hint  to 
his  cattle."— Felix  Holt. 

10.  The  Artistic  Use  of  Dialect.—"  Much  of  the  life 
and  vigor  of  her  dialogue  depends  upon  the  dialect  in  which 
it  is  spoken.  Her  phrases  never  appear  studied,  but  are 
brought  before  us  as  in  real  life,  with  all  their  imperfections 
of  dialect,  and  they  reach  their  mark  straight  as  an  arrow.  A 
great  part,  perhaps  the  finest  part  of  George  Eliot's  work  could 
only  be  translated  into  a  dialect.  .  .  .  When  I  hear 
Adam  Bede's  mother  speak  her  Staffordshire  dialect,  so  rough, 
so  full  of  Saxon  archaisms,  I  feel  myself  face  to  face  with  the 
truth. ' ' — Gaetano  Negri. 

"  The  sense  of  local  coloring  is  greatly  heightened  by  the 
dialogues,  which  speak  the  language  of  the  people  portrayed. 
When  Luke  describes  his  rabbits  as  <  nesh  '  things,  and  when 


602  GEORGE   ELIOT 

Mrs.  Jerome  says  '  Little  gells  should  be  seen  and  not  heered? 
and  Tommy  Transom  mentions  his  readiness  to  pick  up  a 
'  clauch '  penny,  we  are  brought  closer  to  the  homely  life  of 
these  people.  She  has  so  well  succeeded  in  portraying  '  what 
they  call  the  dialeck  hereabout  '  that  the  reader  is  enabled  to 
realize,  as  he  could  not  do  so  well  by  any  other  method,  the 
homeliness  and  rusticity  of  the  life  presented." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I'm  not  this  countryman,  you  may  tell  by  my  tongue,  sir ; 
they're  cu'rous  talkers  i'  this  country,  sir  ;  the  gentry  's  hard  work 
to  hunderstand  'em.  I  was  brought  hup  among  the  gentry,  sir, 
an'  got  the  turn  of  their  tongue  when  I  was  a  bye.  Why,  what 
do  you  think  the  folks  here  says  for  '  hev'nt  you  '  ? — the  gentry, 
you  know,  says  '  hev'nt  you ' ;  well,  the  people  about  here  says, 
'  hanna  yey.'  It's  what  they  call  the  dialeck  as  is  spoke  here- 
about, sir.  That's  what  I've  heard  Squire  Donnithorne  say  many 
a  time  ;  '  it's  the  dialeck ',  says  he." — Adam  Bede. 

"  'No,  no,'  said  Tommy,  wagging  his  head  from  side  to  side, 
'  I  thought  you'd  come  into  that.  I  thought  you'd  know  bet- 
ter than  to  say  contrairy.  But  I'll  shake  hands  \vi'  you  ;  I  don't 
want  to  knock  any  man's  head  off.  I'm  a  good  chap — a  sound 
crock — an  old  family  kep'  out  o'  my  rights.  I  shall  go  to  heaven, 
for  all  Old  Nick.'  "—Felix  Holt. 

"  '  Well,  Mrs.  Fitchett,  how  are  your  fowls  laying  now  ?  '  .  .  . 
'  Pretty  well  for  laying,  madame,  but  they've  ta'en  to  eating  their 
eggs  ;  I've  no  peace  of  mind  with  'em  at  all.' 

"  '  What  will  you  sell  them  a  couple  ?'...'  Well,  ma- 
dame,  half-a-crown  ;  I  couldn't  let  'em  go,  not  under.' 

'"Take  a  pair  of  tumbler  pigeons  for  them— little  beauties.' 
.  .  .  '  Well,  madame,  Master  Fitchett  shall  go  and  see  'em 
after  work.  He's  very  hot  on  new  sorts  ;  to  oblige  you.'  " — Mid- 
dlemarch. 

II.  Labored  Satire — Sarcasm.  —  "George  Eliot  is 
not  so  good  a  satirist  as  she  is  a  humorist.  Her  humor  is 
nearly  always  as  fresh  and  delightful  as  a  morning  in  May, 


GEORGE  ELIOT  603 

but  her  satire  is  labored.  .  .  .  The  foibles  of  the  world 
she  cannot  treat  in  the  vein  of  a  satirist.  .  .  .  Her  satire 
is  heavy,  and  lacks  the  light  touch  with  the  tender  undertone 
of  compassion." — G.  IV.  Cooke. 

"  There  is  an  acerbity  about  her  satire,  with  a  flippancy 
about  her  diction,  when  she  chooses  to  misrepresent  amiable 
weaknesses  and  even  religious  faith,  which  will  have  startled 
and  shocked  many  a  candid  mind,  and  which  is  altogether 
indefensible  in  a  writer  of  fiction,  who  makes  personages  in 
order  to  malign  them,  and  has  the  whole  domain  of  thought 
and  language  to  ransack  for  characters  and  for  expressions." 
— Quarterly  Review. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When  a  man  is  happy  enough  to  win  the  affections  of  a  sweet 
girl,  who  can  soothe  his  cares  with  crochet  and  respond  to  all  his 
most  cherished  ideas  with  bead  urn-rugs  and  chair -covers  in 
German  wool,  he  has,  at  least,  a  guarantee  of  domestic  comfort, 
whatever  trials  may  await  him  out  of  doors.  What  a  resource  it 
is,  under  fatigue  and  irritation,  to  have  your  drawing-room  well 
supplied  with  small  mats."— /««£/'.?  Repentance. 

"  It  is  a  pathetic  sight  and  a  striking  example  of  the  complex- 
ity introduced  into  the  emotions  of  a  high  state  of  civilization — 
the  sight  of  a  fashionably  dressed  female  in  grief.  From  the  sor- 
row of  a  Hottentot  to  that  of  a  woman  in  large  buckram  sleeves, 
with  several  bracelets  on  each  arm,  an  architectural  bonnet,  and 
delicate  ribbon  strings — what  a  long  series  of  gradations ! " — 
Janet's  Repentance. 

"  Mrs.  Bulstrode's  naive  way  of  conciliating  piety  and  worldli- 
ness — the  nothingness  of  this  life  and  the  desirability  of  cut  glass, 
the  consciousness  at  once  of  filthy  rags  and  best  damask,  was  not 
a  sufficient  relief  from  the  weight  of  her  husband's  seriousness." 
— Middlema  rch . 

"  He  was  an  industrious  gleaner  of  personal  details,  and  could 
probably  tell  everything  about  a  great  philosopher  or  physicist — 
except  his  theories  or  discoveries." — Daniel  Deronda. 


604  GEORGE  ELIOT 

12.  Delicate  Pathos. — "The  exquisite  truth  and  deli- 
cacy of  the  pathos  in  these  stories  ['  Adam  Bede '  and 
'  Amos  Barton  ']  I  have  never  seen  equalled  ;  and  they  have 
impressed  me  in  a  manner  that  I  should  find  it  very  difficult 
to  describe  ...  if  I  had  the  impertinence  to  try." 
— Dickens. 

"The  prevailing  pathos  of  her  books  affects  one  with  a 
tender  personal  sympathy  for  the  author,  as  well  as  the  larger 
impersonal  which  it  is  evident  she  wishes  to  inculcate  on 
behalf  of  the  whole  pitiable  world  of  mankind."  —  W.  C. 
Wilkinson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  snow  lay  thick  upon  the  graves,  and  the  day  was  cold 
and  dreary  ;  but  there  was  many  a  sad  eye  watching  that  black 
procession  as  it  passed  from  the  vicarage  to  the  church  and  from 
the  church  to  the  open  grave.  There  were  men  and  women  who 
had  bandied  vulgar  jests  about  their  pastor  and  who  had  lightly 
charged  him  with  sin ;  but  now,  when  they  saw  him  following 
the  coffin,  pale  and  haggard,  he  was  consecrated  anew  by  his 
great  sorrow,  and  they  looked  at  him  with  respectful  pity." — 
Amos  Barton. 

"  But  the  Pitying  Mother  had  not  yet  entered  within  the  walls, 
and  the  morning  arose  on  unchanged  misery  and  despondency. 
Pestilence  was  hovering  in  the  track  of  famine.  Not  only  the 
hospitals  were  full,  but  the  courtyards  of  private  houses  had  been 
turned  into  refuges  and  infirmaries  ;  and  still  there  was  unshel- 
tered want.  And  early  this  morning,  as  usual,  members  of  the 
various  fraternities  who  made  it  part  of  their  duty  to  bury  the 
unfriended  dead,  were  bearing  away  the  corpses  that  had  sunk 
by  the  wayside." — Rontola. 

"  It  was  a  cloudy  day,  and  nearing  dusk.  Arno  ran  dark  and 
shivering  ;  the  hills  were  mournful,  and  Florence  with  its  girdling 
stone  towers  had  that  silent,  tomb-like  look,  which  unbroken 
shadow  gives  to  a  city  seen  from  above.  Santa  Cruce,  where  her 
father  lay,  was  dark  amid  that  darkness,  and  slowly  vanishing  up 
the  narrow  street  was  the  white  load,  like  a  cruel,  deliberate 
Fate  carrying  away  her  father's  life -long  hope  to  bury  it  in  an 


GEORGE   ELIOT  605 

unmarked  grave.  Romola  felt  less  that  she  was  seeing  this  her- 
self than  that  her  father  was  consciou  of  it  as  he  lay  helpless 
under  the  imprisoning  stones,  where  her  hand  could  not  reach 
his  to  tell  him  that  he  was  not  alone." — Romola. 


13.  Depreciation  ol  Individualism. — "She  dispels 
that  pleasant  illusion,  fondled  by  most  writers  of  fiction, 
that  the  individual  is  dominant  in  human  affairs,  and  gets 
what  he  wants  if  he  has  the  energy  to  struggle  for  it.  The 
pitiless  laws  of  existence,  which  are  independent  of  human 
wish  or  will,  and  which  crush  all  who  oppose  their  action, 
she  perceives  with  a  sad  certainty  of  insight.  To  the  egotist 
and  sentimentalist,  raging  or  moaning  at  the  constitution  of 
things,  Nature  seems  cruel  and  Providence  seems  cruel ;  but 
she,  looking  at  individuals  in  relation  to  the  mighty  external 
forces  they  obey  or  resist,  sees  that  unselfishness  is  the  con- 
dition both  of  usefulness  and  happiness  and  that  Providence 
has  no  pets." — E.  P.  IVhipple. 

"So  far  as  George  Eliot's  life  was  concerned,  she  was 
eager  in  her  self-development  and  as  eager  in  her  sympathies. 
But  it  was  a  different  matter  in  the  main  drift  of  her  work. 
.  .  .  She  lowered  the  power  of  individualism.  .  .  . 
Few  have  individualized  their  characters  more  than  she  did, 
and  of  these  characters  we  have  many  distinct  types.  But 
she  individualized  them  with,  I  may  say,  almost  the  set  pur- 
pose of  showing  that  their  individualism  was  to  be  sacrificed 
to  the  general  welfare  of  the  race.  The  more  her  characters 
cling  to  their  individuality,  the  more  they  fail  in  reaching 
happiness  or  peace.  .  .  .  The  whole  of  her  books  is  a 
suppressed  attack  on  individualism  and  an  exaltation  of  self- 
renunciation  as  the  only  force  of  progress,  as  the  only  ground 
of  morality.' ' — Stopford  Brooke. 

"  George  Eliot  evidently  desired  to  destroy  individualism 
as  a  social  force.  The  individual,  according  to  her  teaching, 
is  to  renounce  himself  for  the  sake  of  the  race.  He  is  to  live, 


(5CX5  GEORGE   ELIOT 

not  as  a  personal  being  but  as  a  member  of  the  social  organ- 
ization ;  to  develop  his  altruistic  nature,  not  to  perfect  his 
personal  character." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

Although  this  characteristic  cannot  well  be  illustrated  in 
detached  paragraphs,  it  finds  abundant  illustration  in  the 
general  spirit  of  such  works  as  "  Felix  Holt  "  and  "  Daniel 
Deronda." 


DICKENS,  1812-1870 

Biographical  Outline.  —  Charles  Dickens,  born  at 
Landport,  a  suburb  of  Portsea,  February  7,  1812,  the  eldest 
son  and  second  of  eight  children  ;  father  a  clerk  in  the  dock- 
yard at  Portsmouth,  afterward  a  Parliamentary  reporter;  family 
removed  to  London  in  1814  and  thence  to  Chatham  in  1818 ; 
Dickens  is  taught  first  by  his  mother  and  then  by  one  Wm. 
Giles,  who  kept  a  day-school  in  Chatham ;  the  family  re- 
move in  1821  to  London,  where  the  father  becomes  financially 
embarrassed  and  is  imprisoned  ;  Dickens  obtains  employment 
at  pasting  labels  in  a  blacking  warehouse,  partly  owned  by  a 
cousin,  but  soon  leaves  on  account  of  a  quarrel  between  the 
father  and  the  cousin  ;  by  chance  he  becomes  enabled  to 
attend  school  (about  1824)  at  Wellington  House  Academy, 
where  he  remains  for  nearly  two  years;  writes  stories  for  his 
boy  friends  while  at  school ;  finds  employment  as  clerk  in  a 
law  office,  and  conceives  the  idea  of  becoming  a  reporter;  he 
reads  much  in  the  British  Museum  with  that  end  in  view ; 
displays  from  early  boyhood  a  fondness  for  the  stage ;  be- 
comes intimately  acquainted  with  Macready  and  Fechter,  then 
in  their  glory,  and  is  prevented  from  becoming  an  actor  only 
by  an  accident ;  he  begins  reporting  for  the  True  Sun,  and, 
in  1835,  obtains  a  regular  position  on  the  staff  of  the  Morn- 
ing Chronicle;  the  first  of  his  "Sketches  by  Boz  "  is  pub- 
lished in  the  Monthly  Magazine  in  1833,  but  not  paid  for; 
other  "Sketches"  follow  in  the  Evening  Chronicle; 
"Sketches  by  Boz  "  are  published  in  book  form  in  1836; 
Dickens  ceases  reporting  in  1836  ;  he  begins  the  "  Pickwick 

607 


6o8  DICKENS 

Papers"  merely  as  the  letter-press  to  accompany  comic 
sketches  by  one  Seymour,  then  popular  as  a  comic  draughts- 
man ;  he  publishes  "  Pickwick  Papers"  in  1836-37  ;  both  his 
first  books  are  extremely  successful,  commercially ;  he  earns 
five  guineas  a  week  as  a  reporter,  and  gets  ^150  for  the 
copyrights  of  "  Pickwick  Papers  "  and  "  Sketches  by  Boz  ;" 
in  1836  he  marries  Catherine,  daughter  of  George  Hogarth, 
a  friend  of  Scott  and  conductor  of  the  Evening  Chronicle ; 
Dickens  repurchases  the  copyright  of  "Sketches  by  Boz," 
paying  thirteen  times  what  he  had  received  for  it ;  he  pub- 
lishes "Oliver  Twist"  in  1837-39  and  "Nicholas  Nickle- 
by  "  in  1838-39,  beginning  the  latter  before  finishing  the 
former;  during  1838-39  he  is  editor  of  Bentley 's  Miscel- 
lany, in  which  "Oliver  Twist"  appears  as  a  serial;  he 
receives  a  handsome  income  from  the  sale  of  "  Pickwick 
Papers;"  he  writes  several  unsuccessful  dramas  during 
1836-38  ;  in  1839  takes  up  his  residence  in  Devonshire  Ter- 
race, Regent's  Park;  in  1840  he  establishes  an  illustrated 
weekly  publication  called  Master  Humphrey* s  Clock,  in  which 
appear  the  story  of  that  name  (afterward  called  "The  Old 
Curiosity  Shop  "  )  and  "  Barnaby  Rudge  ;"  in  1841  he  visits 
Edinburgh  by  invitation,  and  receives  great  public  honors ; 
sails  for  America  in  January,  1842,  and  returns  in  July;  he 
publishes  "  American  Notes"  in  1842  and  "  Martin  Chuz- 
zlewit  "  in  1843  ;  publishes  the  "  Christmas  Carol  "  in  De- 
cember, 1843  ;  settles  with  his  family  in  Genoa,  Italy,  in  July, 
1844;  visits  London  at  Christmas  time,  and  reads  the  proofs 
of  "  The  Chimes  "  to  Macready  and  other  friends ;  publishes 
"  The  Chimes  "  in  December,  1844  ;  visits  Rome  and  Naples 
in  the  spring  of  1845,  and  returns  in  June  to  London;  pub- 
lishes the  "Cricket  on  the  Hearth"  in  December,  1845; 
becomes  editor  of  the  Daily  News  for  a  few  weeks  early  in 
1846  ;  spends  the  summer  of  1846  at  Lausanne,  and  removes 
to  Paris  in  the  autumn ;  completes  "  Dombey  and  Son  "  while 
in  Paris,  and  returns  to  London  early  in  1847  ;  during  1847 


DICKENS  609 

and  1848  he  interests  himself  in  amateur  drama  as  manager 
and  actor,  giving  Jonson's  '•  Every  Man  in  His  Humour" 
and  Shakespeare's  "  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  "  in  Liverpool, 
Manchester,  and  London,  the  proceeds  being  given  mainly 
to  John  Poole,  the  author  of  "  Paul  Pry,"  and  to  Sheridan 
Knowles;  in  1850  he  publishes  "David  Copperfield,"  and 
also  establishes  the  weekly  Household  Words,  in  which 
"  Bleak  House  "  appears  serially  during  1852-53  ;  he  spends 
the  summers  of  1853,  1854,  and  1856  at  his  residence  in 
Boulogne ;  makes  a  tour  of  Switzerland  and  Italy  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1853  ;  returns  in  December,  and  reads  the  "  Carol  " 
and  the  "  Cricket  on  the  Hearth  "  to  large  audiences  in  Bir- 
mingham ;  publishes  "Hard  Times"  as  a  serial  in  1854; 
joins  Wilkie  Collins  in  private  theatricals  in  1855-56  ;  pub- 
lishes "  Little  Dorrit  "  as  a  serial  during  1855-57  ;  begins 
formal  public  reading  in  1858,  and  purchases  Gad's  Hill 
Place  during  the  same  year ;  separates  from  his  wife  by 
mutual  agreement  in  May,  1858  ;  reads  with  great  pop- 
ularity and  financial  success  during  1858-59  in  England, 
Scotland,  and  Ireland;  in  the  spring  of  1859  merges  House- 
hold Words  into  All  the  Year  Round,  and  publishes  "A 
Tale  of  Two  Cities  "  as  a  serial ;  "Great  Expectations  "  ap- 
pears in  1860;  by  1861  Dickens  is  giving  most  of  his  time 
and  strength  to  public  reading ;  during  1864-65  he  pub- 
lishes "  Our  Mutual  Friend  ;  "  eighty  readings  given  during 
one-half  of  1866  bring  Dickens  ^£1 5,000  ;  he  sails  for  Boston 
November  9,  1866  ;  reads  in  America  till  April  20,  1867  ; 
returns  to  England  in  May,  and  begins,  in  October,  1867,  his 
"  farewell  "  series  of  readings  ;  gives  his  last  public  reading 
March  16,  1870,  and  begins  "Edwin  Drood  "  during  this 
year  ;  dies  at  Gad's  Hill  June  8,  1870. 


39 


6lO  DICKENS 


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Hanaford,  P.  and  C.,  "Life  and  Writings  of  Dickens."  Boston,  1882, 
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326-386. 

Canning,  A.  S.  G.,  "Philosophy  of  Charles  Dickens. "  London,  1880, 
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528. 

Duyckinck,  E.  A.,  "  Portrait  Gallery. "  New  York,  1875,  Johnson,  Wil- 
son &  Co.,  2:  383-398. 


DICKENS  6fl 

Friswell,  J.  H.,  "  Modern  Men  of   Letters,"  etc.      London,  1870,  Hod- 

der  &  Stoughton,  1-45. 
Henley,   W.  E.,    "Views  and   Reviews."     New  York,  1890,    Scribner, 

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Mas-on,    E.     T.,    "Personal  Traits  of  British  Authors."      New  York, 

1885,  Scribner,  4:    171-233. 
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Blacken.  2:   303-334. 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of   English   Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  377-385- 
Taine,  "History  of    English  Literature."     New   York,    1875,  Holt,  3  : 

178-212. 
Lang,  A.,  "Letters  to   Dead  Authors."     New  York,  1892,  Longmans, 

Green  &  Co.,  9-19. 

Brimley,  G.,  "Essays."     London,  1882,  Macmillan,  281-294. 
Chambers,  R.,  "  Cyclopaedia  of  English  Literature. "     Edinburgh,  1876, 

Chambers,  2:   515-521. 
Cleveland,    C.    D.,    "  English   Literature  of  the  Nineteenth  Century." 

Philadelphia,  1873,  718-730. 

Davey,  S.,  "Darwin,  Carlyle  and  Dickens."     London,   1876,   E.   Bum- 
pus,  121-156. 
Drake,  S.  A.,  "  Our  Great  Benefactors. "     Boston,  1884,  Roberts  Bros., 

I02-III. 
Field,   R.,    "Pen   Portraits   of   Charles  Dickens's  Readings. "     Boston, 

1872,  J.  R.  Osgood. 

Masson,  D.,  "British  Novelists."     Boston,  1892,  W.  Small,  239-258. 
Stephen,  L. ,  "Dictionary  of  National  Biography."     New  York,    Mac- 
millan, 1896,  15:   20-32. 
Bagehot,  W.,  "Works."     Hartford,  1889,  Travellers'  Insurance  Co.,  2: 

239-278. 

Fitzgerald,  P.,  "  Recreations  of  a  Literary  Man."  London,  1882,  48-171. 
Home,  R.  H.,  "A  New  Spirit  of  the  Age."     New  York,  1844,  Harper, 

1-52. 
Jerrold,  W.  B.,  "  The  Best  of  all  Good  Company."     Boston,  1878,  W. 

F.  Gill  &  Co.,  1-80. 
L'Estrange,  A.  G.,  "A  History  of  English  Humour."     London,    1878, 

Hurst  &  Blackett,  2  :   226-241. 
Mackenzie,  R.  S.,  "Life  of  Charles  Dickens."     Philadelphia,  1870,  T. 

B.  Peterson  &  Bros. 
Stoddard,    R.  H.,    "Anecdote    Biographies,"     etc.     New    York,    1875, 

(Bric-a-Brac  Series,  Vol.  2),  Scribner,  Armstrong  &  Co.      2  :   197- 

299. 


6l2  DICKENS 

Watt,  J.  C,  "  Great  Novelists."    Edinburgh,  1880,  Macmillan,  163-218. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 


Hall,   S.   C.,  "A  Book  of  Memories."     London,   1871,  Virtue  &  Co., 

449-4S2- 
Russell,  W.    C.,    "The  Book  of  Authors."     London,    n.   d.,    Warne, 

490-492. 
Allibone,  "Dictionary  of  Authors."     Philadelphia,  1858,  Childs  &   Pe- 

ters, i  :   500-501. 
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333  (Whipple). 

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North  American  Review,  106:  671-672  (C.  E.  Norton);   114:  413-419 

F.  Sheldon). 

Quarterly  Review,  59:  484-518(7.  W.  Croker). 
Scribner's  Monthly,   20:   641-656. 
Harper's  Magazine,  25:  376-379  (L.  G.  Clark);  41:  610-616   (M.  D. 

Conway)  ;   12:  380-386. 
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The  Galaxy,  10  :  253-263  (R.  G.  White). 
Temple  Bar,  83  :    188-200  (H.  Merivale)  ;  27:   225-234. 
Prater's  Magazine,  21:  381-400:29:  167-169  (Thackeray);  82:  130-134. 
Old  and  New,  3  :   480-483. 

Putnam's  Magazine,  5  :   263-272  (G.  F.  Talbot). 
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74-79- 
Every  Saturday,  9  :  450-452. 


DICKENS  613 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Fondness  for  Caricature  —  Exaggeration  — 
Grotesqueness. — "In  regard  to  his  humorous  characters, 
the  intensity  with  which  he  conceives  them,  and  the  over- 
flowing abundance  of  joy  and  merriment  which  springs  in- 
stinctively up  from  the  very  fountains  of  his  being  at  the 
slightest  hint  of  the  ludicrous,  sometimes  leads  him  to  the 
very  verge  of  caricature.  .  .  .  They  [his  characters]  are 
caricatured  more  in  appearance  than  in  reality,  and  if  grotesque 
in  form,  are  true  and  natural  at  heart.  .  .  .  Such  carica- 
ture as  this  is  to  character  what  epigram  is  to  fact — a  mode  of 
conveying  truth  more  distinctly  by  suggesting  it  through  a 
brilliant  exaggeration.  .  .  .  The  mind  of  the  reader  uncon- 
sciously limits  the  extravagance  into  which  Dickens  sometimes 
runs,  and  indeed  discovers  the  actual  features  and  lineaments 
of  the  character  shining  the  more  clearly  through  it.  ... 
It  is  not  that  caricature  which  has  no  foundation  but  in  '  the  ex- 
travagancy and  crazy  ribaldry  of  fancy,'  but  caricature  based 
on  the  most  piercing  insight  into  actual  life  ;  so  keen  indeed 
that  the  mind  finds  relief  in  playing  with  its  own  conceptions. 
A  caricaturist  rarely  presents  anything  but  a  man's  peculiarity, 
but  Dickens  ever  presents  the  man.  .  .  .  Mr.  Richard 
Swiveller  is  a  fine  example  of  the  felicity  with  which  Dickens 
can  tread  the  dizziest  edges  of  characterization  without  sinking 
into  mere  caricature.  He  seems  to  be  taken  by  surprise  as 
his  glad  and  genial  fancies  glide  into  his  brain  and  to  laugh 
and  exult  with  the  beings  he  has  called  into  existence  in  the 
spirit  of  a  man  observing,  not  creating.  Squeers  and  Peck- 
sniff, Tony  Weller  and  old  John  Willett,  although  painted 
with  such  distinctness  that  we  seem  to  see  them  with  the 
bodily  eye,  we  still  feel  to  be  somewhat  overcharged  in  the 
description.  In  fact,  his  characters  are  all  more  or  less  over- 
charged, as  if  the  author  were  a  little  intoxicated  with  his  own 
humorous  conceptions,  and  could  not  keep  himself  in  any 


614  DICKENS 

measure.  .  .  .  His  genius  in  characterization  tends  to 
the  grotesque  and  extravagant ;  his  personages  in  their  names, 
as  in  their  qualities,  produce  on  us  the  effect  of  strangeness." 
-£.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Few  great  humorists  have  so  persistently  sought  to  efface 
the  line  which  separates  the  barely  possible  from  the  morally 
probable.  .  .  .  It  is  to  his  sense  of  the  grotesque  rather 
than  to  any  deep-seated  satirical  intention,  and  certainly  not 
to  any  want  of  reverence  or  piety,  that  I  would  likewise 
ascribe  the  exaggeration  and  unfairness  of  which  he  is  guilty 
against  Little  Bethel  and  all  its  works.  The  vigor  of  Dickens 
— a  mental  and  moral  vigor,  supported  by  a  splendid  physical 
organism — was  the  parent  of  his  tendency  to  exaggeration. 
But  without  this  vigor  he  could  not  have  been  as  creative  as 
he  was." — A.  W.  Ward. 

11  The  tendency  of  Dickens,  in  all  his  painting,  is  toward 
caricature.  The  fault  is  an  outgrowth  of  his  very  power. 
Seeing  in  an  instant,  with  intense  abstraction,  the  odd  feature 
or  whimsical  bent  in  any  man  or  woman,  he  creates  a  char- 
acter from  that  single  quality,  making  his  creation  stand  out 
in  bright  relief  as  the  type  of  a  whole  class." — W.  F.  Collier. 

"  His  vivid  perception  of  external  oddities  passes  into 
something  like  hallucination.  .  .  .  His  books  are  there- 
fore inimitable  caricatures  of  contemporary  '  humors '  rather 
than  the  masterpieces  of  a  great  observer  of  human  nature. ' ' 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  He  was  apt  to  be  a  caricaturist  where  he  should  have 
been  a  painter  ;  he  was  often  mawkish  and  often  extravagant ; 
he  was  sometimes  more  inept  than  a  great  writer  has  ever 
been."—  W.  E.  Henley. 

"  There  are  no  caricatures  in  the  portraits  of  Hogarth,  nor 
are  there  any  in  the  pages  of  Dickens ;  the  most  striking 
thing  in  both  is  their  inexhaustible  variety  and  truth  of  char- 
acter. ...  If  the  people  examined  their  own  minds, 
they  would  be  very  likely  to  find  that  this  opinion  [that 


DICKENS  615 

Dickens  often  caricatures]  chiefly  originated  and  was  support- 
ed by  certain  undoubted  caricatures  among  the  illustrations. 
Cruikshank  [Dickens's  early  illustrator]  appears 
sometimes  to  have  made  his  sketches  without  due  reference, 
if  any,  to  the  original.  .  .  .  When  he  deals  with  a  dirty 
young  thief  he  refers  to  him  as  '  the  first-named  young  gentle- 
man;' while  the  old  Jew,  Fagin — a  horrible  compound  of  all 
sorts  of  villainy — the  author  designates  as  '  the  merry  old 
gentleman."  .  .  .  Everybody  is  struck  with  a  sense  of 
the  ludicrous  at  the  preposterousness  of  the  compliment.  In 
this  way  the  author  avoids  disgust,  loses  no  point  of  his  true 
meaning,  and  gains  in  the  humour  of  his  scene." — R.  H. 
Home, 

11  He  seems  to  have  been  more  destitute  of  the  faculty  of 
self-criticism  than  any  person  of  whom  I  can  think  who  pos- 
sessed anything  like  his  powers  of  creation.  .  .  .  For 
once  that  he  will  content  himself  with  this  [a  quiet  style],  he 
will  indulge  a  score  of  times  in  a  kind  of  trumpery,  strained, 
melodramatic  rant.  .  .  .  He  will  spoil  the  admirable 
vigor  of  his  descriptive  faculty  at  crises  by  plastering  and 
daubing  this  rant  over  the  scenes,  and  will  change  a  shudder 
to  a  yawn  by  simply  overdoing  it.  I  cannot  think  that  to 
close  observers  Dickens  can  ever  have  seemed  a  realist.  He 
was  too  glaringly  fantastic,  phantasmagoric,  theatrical  for 
that. " — Saints  bury. 

1 '  Mr.  Dickens's  personages  are  mostly  extravagant  carica- 
tures ;  often,  too,  not  the  caricature  of  a  whole  man  but  of 
one  trait,  or  even  trick,  of  a  man,  as  all  caricatures  are  apt  to 
be.  Most  of  them,  nearly  all  of  them,  are  such  creatures  as 
never  did  exist,  and  could  by  no  possibility  exist.  Dickens 
was  mainly  a  caricaturist,  and  his  caricatures  are  far  more  ex- 
travagant and  exaggerated  than  any  that  John  Leech  or  even 
Richard  Doyle  drew  for  Punch's  pages." — Richard  Grant 
White. 

"  Dickens  had  for  his  subject  only  the  twirls  and  oddities 


6l6  DICKENS 

of  nature,  and  had,  in  general,  a  highly  conventionalized  and 
unreal  sphere,  made,  however,  all  the  more  mechanical  by 
the  incongruities  of  absolute  fact  with  the  wild  vagaries  of 
freakish  wit  and  fancy." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

11  Thackeray's  personages  are  all  men,  those  of  Dickens  are 
personified  oddities.  The  one  is  an  artist,  the  other  a  carica- 
turist. .  .  .  Thackeray  looks  at  life  from  the  club-house 
window,  Dickens  from  the  reporter's  box  in  the  police  court. 
Dickens  is  certainly  one  of  the  greatest  comic  writers  that 
ever  lived,  and  he  has  perhaps  created  more  types  of  oddity 
than  any  other." — Lowell. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  Dickens  never  drew  a  clergy- 
man except  to  caricature  him.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Spectator,  at  the  time  of  Dickens's  death,  declared:  "His 
delight  in  the  grotesque  has  done  more  than  ever  Mr.  J.  S. 
Mill,  by  any  philosophical  defence  of  liberty,  could  do  to 
make  us  tolerant  toward  individual  eccentricity  of  almost 
every  shade."  Dickens  himself  sums  up  the  whole  matter 
in  a  letter,  replying  to  a  kindly  criticism  by  Lord  Lytton. 
He  says:  "  I  have  such  an  inexpressible  enjoyment  in  what 
I  see  in  a  droll  light  that  I  dare  say  I  pet  it  as  if  it  were  a 
spoiled  child." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  [Quilp]  ate  hard  eggs,  shell  and  all,  devoured  gigantic  prawns 
with  the  heads  and  tails  on,  chewed  tobacco  and  water  cresses  at 
the  same  time,  drank  boiling  tea  without  winking,  bit  his  fork 
and  spoon  till  they  bent  again  .  .  .  [till]  the  women  were 
nearly  frightened  out  of  their  wits  and  began  to  doubt  if  he  were 
really  a  human  creature." — Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

"  He  had  eyes  .  .  .  with  no  depth  in  the  color  or  form 
and  much  too  near  together — as  if  they  were  afraid  of  being  found 
out  in  something,  singly,  if  they  kept  too  far  apart.  They  had  a 
sinister  expression,  under  an  old  cocked  hat  like  a  three-cornered 
spittoon.  .  .  .  Except  on  the  crown,  which  was  raggedly 
bald,  he  had  stiff,  black  hair  standing  jaggedly  all  over  it  and 


DICKENS  617 

growing  down  hill  almost  to  his  broad,  blunt  nose.  It  was  so  like 
smith's  work,  so  much  more  like  the  top  of  a  strongly  spiked 
wall  than  a  head  of  hair,  that  the  best  of  players  at  leap-frog  might 
have  declined  him  as  the  most  dangerous  man  in  the  world  to  go 
over." — A  7\ile  of  Two  Cities. 

"  Her  name  was  Paragon.  Her  nature  was  represented  to  us, 
when  we  engaged  her,  as  being  feebly  expressed  in  her  name. 
She  had  a  written  character  as  large  as  a  proclamation,  and  ac- 
cording to  that  document  could  do  everything  of  a  domestic  nat- 
ure that  ever  I  heard  of,  and  a  great  many  things  that  I  never 
did  hear  of.  She  was  a  woman  in  the  prime  of  life  ;  of  a  severe 
countenance,  and  subject  (particularly  in  the  arms)  to  a  sort  of  a 
perpetual  measles.  She  had  a  cousin  in  the  Life  Guards,  with 
such  long  legs  that  he  looked  like  the  afternoon  shadow  of  some- 
body else." — David  Copperfield. 


2.  Genial  Humor. — It  would  be  a  most  unjust  and 
unwarranted  assumption  to  say  that  the  manifestation  of  Dick- 
ens's  fun-loving  faculty  was  confined  to  burlesque  or  carica- 
ture. Lord  Jeffrey,  who  has  not  been  noted  for  his  partiality 
toward  writers  in  general,  asserts  that  Dickens  "has  given 
more  delight,  and  has  suggested  better  feelings  to  a  larger 
class  of  readers  than  any  other  author  except  Shakespeare." 
Bulwer  calls  him  "  our  hearth's  wise  cheerer."  Lydia  Ma- 
ria Child  calls  the  "Christmas  Carol"  "one  of  the  sunniest 
bubbles  that  ever  floated  on  the  stream  of  light  literature." 
And  Thackeray,  who  must  be  admitted  to  be  an  intelligent 
judge  of  true  humor,  wrote  as  follows  in  his  "  Box  of  Christ- 
mas Books  :  "  "There  is  but  one  book  left  in  the  box,  the 
smallest  one ;  but  oh,  how  much  the  best  of  all !  It  is  the 
work  of  the  master  of  all  English  humorists  now  alive — the 
young  man  who  came  and  took  his  place  calmly  at  the  head  of 
the  whole  tribe,  and  who  has  kept  it.  ...  Think  of  the 
harmless  laughter,  the  genial  wit,  the  frank,  manly  love  he 
has  taught  us  all  to  feel  !  "  And  of  the  "  Christmas  Carol  " 
Thackeray  says:  "It  seems  to  me  a  national  benefit,  and 


6l8  DICKENS 

to  every  man  and  woman  who  reads  it  a  personal  kind- 
ness." 

"Of  all  our  own  great  writers  since  Scott,  Dickens  is 
probably  the  man  to  whom  the  world  owes  most  gratitude. 
No  other  has  caused  so  many  sad  hearts  to  be  lifted  up  in 
laughter ;  no  other  has  added  so  much  mirth  to  the  toilsome 
and  perplexed  life  of  men,  of  poor  and  rich,  of  learned  and 
unlearned.  '  A  vast  hope  has  passed  across  the  world,'  says 
Alfred  de  Musset.  We  may  say  that  with  Dickens  a  happy 
smile,  a  joyous  laugh,  went  round  trie  earth." — Andrew  Lang. 

"  Charles  Dickens  was,  before  all  things,  a  great  humorist 
— doubtless,  the  greatest  of  this  century ;  for  though  we  may 
find  in  Scott  a  more  truly  Shakespearian  humour  of  the  highest 
order,  the  humour  of  Dickens  is  so  varied,  so  paramount,  so 
inexhaustible,  that  he  stands  forth  in  our  memory  as  the 
humorist  of  the  age.  ...  In  this  fine  and  most  rare  gift 
he  abounds  to  overflowing ;  and  this  humour  pours  in  perfect 
cataracts  of  '  grotesque  imagery  '  over  every  phase  of  life, 
the  poor  and  the  lower  classes  of  his  time  in  London  and  in 
a  few  of  its  great  suburbs  and  its  neighboring  parts." — 
Frederic  Harrison. 

"  Dickens's  works  furnish  a  constant  commentary  on  the 
distinction  between  wit  and  humour;  for,  of  sheer  wit,  either 
in  remark  or  repartee,  there  is  scarcely  an  instance  in  any  of 
his  volumes,  while  of  humour  there  is  a  fulness  and  gusto  in 
every  page.  .  .  .  He  continually  exhibits  the  most  trifling 
and  commonplace  things  in  a  new  and  amusing  light." — 
£.  H.  Home. 

' '  I  have  seen  him  praised  for  wit ;  but  I  should  say  that 
when  he  is  really  funny  he  is  always  humorous,  but  never 
funny  when  he  attempts  wit.  It  is  apt  to  land  him  in  the 
Circumlocution  Office  and  other  dry  places,  wherein  an  over- 
strained satire  prowls  and  barks.  But  in  his  own  region  of 
partly  observed,  partly  invented  humour  of  the  fantastic  kind 
his  felicity  is  astonishing." — Saintsbury. 


DICKENS  619 

"  '  Pickwick  Papers  '  is  an  almost  perfect  specimen  of  the 
strictly  English  quality  of  fun,  .  .  .  which  differs  as 
greatly  from  the  humour  of  Scotland  or  Ireland  as  from 
French  wit  or  American  extravagance." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

1 '  In  the  first  pages  of  the  '  Pickwick  Papers  '  he  showed  a 
humor  richer,  subtler  than  that  of  any  writer  who  was  then 
living  or  who  has  since  come  before  the  public.  .  . 
Humor  was  Mr.  Dickens's  great  distinctive  trait ;  and  for 
humor,  pure  and  simple,  he  produced  in  all  his  life  nothing 
quite  equal  to  ;  Pickwick,' — nothing  so  sustained,  so  varied, 
so  unrestrained." — Richard  Grant  White. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Richard  Swiveller  took  a  greasy  memorandum-book  from  his 
pocket  and  made  an  entry  therein. 

"  '  Is  that  a  reminder  in  case  you  should  forget  to  call  ? '  said 
Trent,  with  a  sneer. 

"  '  Not  exactly,  Fred,"  replied  the  imperturbable  Richard,  con- 
tinuing to  write  with  a  business-like  air.  '  I  enter  in  this  little 
book  the  names  of  the  streets  that  I  can't  go  down  while  the  shops 
are  open.  This  dinner  to-day  closes  Long  Acre.  I  bought  a  pair 
of  boots  in  Great  Queen  Street  last  week,  and  made  that  no  thor- 
oughfare, too.  There's  only  one  avenue  in  the  Strand  left  open 
now,  and  I  shall  have  to  stop  up  that  to-night  with  a  pair  of 
gloves.'  " — Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

"  These  audiences  were  of  a  very  superior  description,  includ- 
ing a  great  many  young  ladies'  boarding-schools,  whose  favor 
Mrs.  Jarley  had  been  at  great  pains  to  conciliate  by  altering  the 
face  and  costume  of  Mr.  Grimaldi  as  clown  to  represent  Mr. 
Lindley  Murray  as  he  appeared  when  engaged  in  the  composition 
of  his  English  Grammar  and  turning  a  murderess  into  Mrs.  Han- 
nah More,  both  of  which  likenesses  were  admitted  by  Miss  Mon- 
flathers,  who  was  at  the  head  of  the  head  Boarding  and  Day  es- 
tablishment in  the  town,  .  .  .  to  be  quite  startling  from  their 
extreme  correctness." — Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

"  If,  by  the  sacrifice  of  all  my  property,  I  could  get  transmi- 


620  DICKENS 

grated  into  a  dog — I — I  really  think  I  should  never  leave  off  wag- 
ging my  tail." — Edwin  Drood. 

"  It  may  further  be  remarked,  that  Miss  Knag  still  aimed  at 
youth,  although  she  had  shot  beyond  it  years  ago." — Nicholas 
Nickleby. 


3.  Incarnation  of  Characteristics — Single 
Strokes. — "  He  has  a  very  peculiar  power  of  taking  hold  of 
some  particular  traits  and  making  a  character  out  of  them. 
He  is  especially  apt  to  incarnate  particular  professions  in  this 
way ;  many  of  his  people  never  speak  without  some  allusion 
to  their  occupation.  You  cannot  separate  them  from  it,  nor 
does  the  writer  ever  separate  them  :  ...  he  sees  people 
in  the  street  doing  certain  things,  talking  in  a  certain  way, 
and  his  fancy  petrifies  them  in  the  act :  he  goes  on  fancying 
hundreds  of  reduplications  of  that  act :  he  frames  an  exist- 
ence in  which  there  is  nothing  else  but  that  aspect  which 
attracted  his  attention." — Walter  Bagehot. 

"The  tendency  of  Dickens's  genius,  both  in  the  actual 
and  the  imaginary,  is  to  personify,  to  individualize.  This 
makes  his  pages  all  alive  with  character.  Not  only  does  he 
never  treat  of  man  in  the  abstract,  but  he  gives  personality  to 
the  rudest  shows  of  nature.  .  .  .  The  whole  originality 
and  power  of  Dickens  lies  in  the  instinctive  insight  into  in- 
dividual character.  .  .  .  He  has  gleaned  all  his  facts 
from  observation  and  sympathy,  in  a  diligent  scrutiny  of 
actual  life,  and  no  contemporary  author  is  less  indebted  to 
books.  .  .  .  All  that  he  observes  is  taken  up  and  trans- 
formed by  his  imagination — becomes  Dickensized,  in  fact,  so 
that,  whether  he  describes  a  landscape  or  a  boot-jack  or  a 
building  or  a  man,  we  see  the  object  not  as  it  is  in  itself  but 
as  it  is  deliciously  bewitched  by  his  method  of  looking  at  it. 
.  .  .  The  result  is  that  we  do  not  have  in  him  an  exact 
transcript  of  life  but  an  individualized  idea  of  life  from  his 
point  of  view.  He  has,  in  short,  discovered  and  colonized 


DICKENS  621 

one  of  the  waste  districts  of  Imagination,  which  we  may  call 
Dickensland  ;  .  .  .  from  his  own  brain  he  has  peopled  it 
with  some  fourteen  hundred  persons  ;  and  it  agrees  with  the 
settlements  made  there  by  Shakespeare  and  Scott  in  being 
better  known  than  such  geographical  countries  as  Canada  and 
Australia.  .  .  .  It  is  distinguished  from  all  other  colonies 
in  Brainland  by  the  ineffaceable  peculiarities  of  its  colonizer. 
.  .  .  He  has  created  an  ideal  population  which  is  more 
interesting  to  human  beings  than  the  great  body  of  their 
actual  friends  and  neighbors.  .  .  .  His  method  of  assail- 
ing social  and  political  abuses  is  to  make  them  ridiculous  or 
hateful ;  and  he  makes  them  ridiculous  or  hateful  by  imper- 
sonating them  in  men  and  women." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  There  is  an  individuality  even  about  the  buildings  [in 
Dickensland].  .  .  .  There  are  houses  sly-looking,  houses 
wicked  -  looking,  houses  pompous  -  looking.  .  .  .  You 
know  all  the  people  as  you  know  your  own  brothers  and  sis- 
ters."— Alexander  Smith. 

"  A  man,  woman,  or  child  cannot  buy  a  morsel  of  pickled 
salmon,  look  at  his  shoe,  or  bring  a  mug  of  ale  ;  a  solitary 
object  cannot  pass  on  the  other  side  of  the  way  ;  a  boy  can- 
not take  a  bite  at  a  turnip  or  hold  a  horse  ;  a  bystander  can- 
not answer  the  simplest  question  ;  a  dog  cannot  fall  into  a 
doze  ;  a  bird  cannot  whet  his  bill ;  a  pony  cannot  have  a  pe- 
culiar nose  or  a  pig  one  ear,  but  out  peeps  the  first  germ  of 
a  character.  .  .  .  There  is  also  what  Lamb  calls  '  the 
dumb  rhetoric  of  the  scenery.'  .  .  .  He  not  only  ani- 
mates furniture  and  stocks  and  stones  or  even  the  wind  with 
human  powers,  but  often  gives  them  an  individual  rather  than 
a  merely  generalized  character.  .  .  .  Old,  deserted, 
broken-windowed  houses  grow  crazed  with  staring  each  other 
out  of  countenance ;  and  crook-backed  chimney-pots  and 
cowls  turn  slowly  round  with  witch -like  mutter  and  sad  whis- 
pering moan,  to  cast  a  hollow  spell  upon  the  scene." — R.  H. 
Home. 


622  DICKENS 

"  Most  of  Dickens's  characters  represent  a  class.  . 
He  never  develops  a  character  from  within  but  begins  by 
showing  how  the  nature  of  the  individual  has  been  developed 
externally  by  his  whole  life  in  the  world.  To  this  effect  he 
first  paints  his  portrait  at  full  length ;  sometimes  his  dress 
before  his  face,  and  most  commonly  his  dress  and  demeanor. 
When  he  has  done  this  to  his  satisfaction  hefee/s  in  the  man, 
and  the  first  words  that  he  utters  are  the  key-note  of  his  char- 
acter. .  .  .  His  characters  are  for  the  most  part  fac- 
simile creations,  built  up  with  materials  from  the  life  as  re- 
tained by  a  most  tenacious  memory.  They  are  not  mere 
realities  but  the  type  and  essence  of  real  classes. 
The  men  and  things  he  deals  with  he  means  actually  as  he 
calls  them  ;  the  only  exception  to  their  reality  is  that  they 
represent  classes  ;  the  best  of  them  are  never  mechanical, 
matter-of-fact  portraits." — R.  H.  Horne. 

11  These  personages  light  up  the  scenes  with  unfailing  light 
and  mirth.  In  them  we  seek,  not  the  excitement  of  story 
nor  that  later  fashion  of  excitement,  the  analysis  of  character. 
Dickens  was,  fortunately  for  us,  no  analyst.  He 
neither  anatomizes  nor  explains  the  amusing  and,  it  must  be 
allowed,  extraordinary  persons  whom  he  puts  before  us. 
.  They  live,  not  because  their  author  shows  us  their 
machinery,  but  because  we  are  personally  acquainted  with 
themselves.  .  .  .  It  is  almost  exclusively  in  his  comic 
characters  that  the  genius  of  Dickens  is  really  displayed.  The 
few  exceptions  are  chiefly  to  be  found  in  the  criminal  class ; 
Bill  Sikes,  for  instance,  is  a  criminal  to  be  proud  of,  and  there 
is  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  the  repulsive  figure  of  Jonas  Chuz- 
zle wi  t . "  — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

Dickens  once  told  Lewes  that  every  word  spoken  by  his 
characters  was  distinctly  heard  by  him.  To  the  same  effect  an 
anonymous  critic  says:  "  He  is  something  like  Balzac,  who 
said  that  he  could  not  describe  a  landscape  until  he  had 
turned  himself  for  the  time  into  trees,  grass,  and  flowers 


DICKENS  623 

.  .  .  so  that  he  became,  as  it  were,  a  part  of  them  and  they 
a  part  of  him.  .  .  .  The  winds,  streams,  and  woods  are 
haunted  with  spirits." 

"In  '  Pickwick  Papers  '  was  seen  the  art  which  can  com- 
bine traits  vividly  true  to  particular  men  or  women  with  pro- 
pensities common  to  all  mankind.  .  .  .  He  exposed 
himself  to  the  charge  of  now  and  then  putting  human  nature 
itself  in  the  place  of  the  individual,  who  should  be  only  a  small 
section  of  it." — John  Forster. 

"  Having  caught  a  hint  from  actual  fact,  he  generalizes  it, 
runs  away  with  this  generalization  into  a  corner,  and  devel- 
ops it  there  into  a  character  to  match  ;  which  character  he  then 
transports  along  with  others  similarly  suggested  into  a  world 
of  semi-fantastic  conditions,  where  the  laws  need  not  be  those 
of  ordinary  probability.  He  has  characters  of  ideal  perfection 
and  beauty  as  well  as  ideal  ugliness  and  brutality — characters 
of  a  human  kind  verging  on  the  supernatural  as  well  as  char- 
acters actually  belonging  to  the  supernatural.  Even  his  situ- 
ations and  scenery  often  lie  in  a  region  beyond  the  margin  of 
every-day  life." — David  Masson. 

Lewes  calls  Dickens's  personages  "  not  characters,  but  per- 
sonified characteristics,"  and  a  writer  in  Blackwood's  Maga- 
zine, sums  up  the  case  as  follows:  "This  can  be  nothing 
but  genius,  that  vivifying  and  creating  principle  which  not 
only  makes  something  out  of  nothing,  but  which  communicates 
qualities  to  a  bit  of  dull  clay,  of  which,  in  itself,  it  is  utterly 
unconscious — genius  which  we  are  laboring  to  define  without 
growing  much  the  wiser,  but  which  we  can  no  more  refuse 
to  be  influenced  by  than  we  can  deny  the  evidence  of  our 
senses." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  A  fleet  of  barges  were  coming  lazily  on,  some  sideways,  some 
head-first,  some  stern  first  ;  all  in  a  wrong  headed,  dogged,  ob- 
stinate way,  bumping  up  against  the  larger  craft,  running  under 
the  bows  of  steamboats,  getting  into  every  kind  of  noolc  and 


624  DICKENS 

corner  where  they  had  no  business,  and  being  crunched  on  all 
sides  like  so  many  walnut  shells." — Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

"  Nothing  seemed  to  be  going  on  but  the  clocks,  and  they  had 
such  drowsy  faces,  such  lazy,  heavy  hands,  and  such  cracked  voices 
that  they  surely  must  have  been  too  slow.  The  very  dogs  were 
all  asleep,  and  the  flies,  drunk  with  moist  sugar  in  the  grocer's 
shop,  forgot  their  wings  and  briskness,  and  baked  to  death  in 
dusty  corners  of  the  window.'' — Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

"Besides,  the  kettle  was  aggravating  and  obstinate.  It 
wouldn't  allo\v  itself  to  be  adjusted  on  the  top  bar  ;  it  wouldn't 
hear  of  accommodating  itself  kindly  to  the  knobs  of  coal ;  it 
would  lean  forward  with  a  drunken  air  and  dribble,  a  very  idiot 
of  a  kettle  on  the  hearth.  It  was  quarrelsome,  and  hissed  and 
spluttered  morosely  at  the  fire.  To  sum  up  all,  the  lid,  resisting 
Mrs.  Peerybingle's  fingers,  first  of  all  turned  topsy-turvy  and 
then,  with  an  ingenious  pertinacity  deserving  of  a  better  cause, 
dived  sideways  in — down  to  the  very  bottom  of  the  kettle.  And 
the  hull  of  the  Royal  George  has  never  made  half  the  monstrous 
resistance  to  coming  out  of  the  water  which  the  lid  of  that  kettle 
employed  against  Mrs.  Peerybingle  before  she  got  it  up  again." 
—  The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth. 


4.  Descriptive  Power — Minuteness  of  Observa- 
tion— Vividness. — Dickens  is  a  master  of  description. 
Hardly  since  Defoe  has  he  been  equalled  in  his  power  of 
minute  observation.  When  he  was  first  becoming  known, 
Chambers  observed  that  Dickens  was  the  first  writer  since 
Smollett  who  had  taken  notice  of  "  the  prodigious  fund  of 
character  for  description  to  be  found  in  the  streets  of  London. 
This  inexhaustible  fund  had  lain  untouched.  The  most  odd- 
looking  and  odd  -speaking  beings  were  suffered  to  vegetate 
unheeded,  unchronicled."  A  writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review 
calls  him  "  the  truest  and  most  spirited  delineator  of  English 
life  amongst  the  middle  and  lower  classes  since  the  days  of 
Smollett  and  Fielding." 

"  His  eye  is  worth  all  his  other  senses.  ...  He  pos- 
sesses the  power  of  seeing  much  more  in  a  given  space  and 


DICKENS  625 

time  than  people  usually  do.  .  .  .  His  works  contain  a 
larger  number  of  faithful  pictures  of  the  middle  and  lower 
classes  of  England  of  the  present  period  than  can  be  found  in 
any  other  modern  work.  .  .  .  This  closeness  to  reality, 
so  that  what  he  describes  has  the  same  effect  upon  the  internal 
sense  as  thinking  of  reality,  renders  Dickens  very  like  Defoe." 
— R.  H.  Home. 

11  The  first  of  these  [the  characteristics  of  Dickens]  is  his 
power  of  observation  in  detail.  We  have  heard — we  do  not 
know  whether  correctly  or  incorrectly — that  he  can  go  down 
a  crowded  street  and  tell  you  all  that  is  in  it — what  each  shop 
was,  what  the  grocer's  name  was,  how  many  scraps  of  orange- 
peel  there  were  on  the  pavement.  His  works  give  you  ex- 
actly the  same  idea :  the  amount  of  detail  which  there  is  in 
them  is  something  amazing — to  an  ordinary  writer  something 
incredible.  ...  He  has,  too,  the  peculiar  alertness  of 
observation  that  is  observable  in  those  who  live  by  it :  he  de- 
scribes London  like  a  special  correspondent  for  posterity." — 
Walter  Bagehot. 

"  The  commonest  objects,  the  most  ordinary  interiors,  any 
old  house,  a  parlor,  a  boat,  fifty  things  that  in  the  ordinary 
tale-teller  would  pass  unmarked,  are  made  vividly  present  and 
intelligi  ble  ;  are  brought  out  with  a  strength  of  relief,  pre- 
cision, and  force  unapproached  in  any  other  writer  of  prose 
fiction." — -John  Forster. 

"  Dickens  understood  the  greatness  of  trifles  ;  he  knew  and 
showed  his  science  in  small  things.  ...  He  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  most  petty  personal  traits  of  a  man  or  woman 
to  make  up  the  total  of  oddity  or  ugliness  or  turpitude  or 
saintliness  he  desired  to  present."— y.  C.  Watt. 

11  In  '  Oliver  Twist '  the  lowest  and  vilest  forms  of  London 
life  are  painted  with  a  startling  truthfulness  that  rivals  the 
pencil  of  Defoe. "—rF.  F.  Collier. 

"  The  source  of  all  Dickens's  descriptions  is  pure  imagina- 
tion. .  .  .  An  imagination  so  lucid  and  energetic  cannot 
40 


626  DICKENS 

but  animate  inanimate  objects  without  an  effort. 
His  imagination  is  so  active  that  it  carries  everything  with  it 
in  the  path  which  it  chooses.  .  .  .  Dickens  is  a  poet ;  he 
is  as  much  at  home  in  the  imaginative  as  in  the  actual.  .  .  . 
Objects,  with  Dickens,  take  their  hue  from  the  thoughts  of  his 
characters. ' ' — Taine. 

"  To  the  way  in  which  his  imagination  enabled  him  to  iden- 
tify himself  with  the  figments  of  his  own  imagination,  he 
frequently  testified.  Dante  is  not  rnore  certain  in  his  celestial 
and  infernal  topography  than  was  Dickens  as  to  every  stair  in 
the  little  midshipman's  house  and  as  to  '  every  young  gentle- 
man's bedstead '  in  Dr.  Blimber's  establishment.  .  .  . 
The  gift  of  suddenly  finding  out  what  a  man,  a  thing,  a  com- 
bination of  man  and  thing  is  like — this  too  comes  by  nature, 
and  there  is  something  electrifying  in  its  sudden  exercise. 
.  .  .  He  was  always  observing.  Half  his  life  he  was 
afoot.  ...  A  complete  natural  history  of  the  country 
actor,  the  London  landlady,  and  the  British  waiter  might  be 
compiled  from  his  pages.  This  form  of  observation  and  de- 
scription extended  from  human  life  to  that  of  animals.  .  .  . 
Dickens  has  been  called  '  The  Landseer  of  Fiction.'  .  .  . 
In  everything,  whether  animate  or  inanimate,  he  found  out  at 
once  the  characteristic  feature,  and  reproduced  it  in  words 
of  faultless  precision.  This  is  the  secret  of  his  descriptive 
power."—  A.  W.  Ward. 

"  How  true  to  nature,  even  in  the  most  trivial  details,  al- 
most every  character  and  every  incident  in  the  works  of  the 
great  novelist  really  were,  is  best  known  to  those  whose  tastes 
or  duties  led  them  to  frequent  the  paths  of  life  from  which 
Dickens  delighted  to  draw." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 


DICKENS  627 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  was  not  much  to  look  at.  A  rickety  table,  with  spare 
bundles  of  papers,  yellow  and  ragged  from  long  carriage  in  the 
pocket,  ostentatiously  displayed  upon  its  top  ;  a  couple  of  stools 
set  face  to  face  on  opposite  sides  of  this  crazy  piece  of  furniture  ; 
a  treacherous  old  chair  by  the  fire-place  ;  .  .  .  two  or  three 
common  books  of  practice  ;  ajar  of  ink,  a  pounce  box,  a  stinted 
hearth  broom,  .  .  .  these,  with  the  yellow  wainscot  of  the 
walls,  the  smoke-discolored  ceiling,  the  dust  and  cobwebs,  were 
among  the  most  prominent  decorations  of  the  office  of  Mr.  Samp- 
son Brass." — The  Old  Curiosity  Shop, 

"  The  poulterers'  shops  were  still  half  open,  and  the  fruiterers' 
were  radiant  in  their  glory.  There  were  great,  round,  pot-bellied 
baskets  of  chestnuts,  shaped  like  the  waistcoat  of  jolly  old  gentle- 
men, lolling  at  the  doors  and  tumbling  out  into  the  street  in  their 
apoplectic  opulence.  There  were  ruddy,  brown-faced,  broad- 
girthed  Spanish  onions,  shining  in  the  fatness  of  their  growth  like 
Spanish  friars  and  winking  from  their  shelves  in  wanton  slyness 
at  the  girls  as  they  went  by  and  glanced  demurely  at  the  hung-up 
mistletoe.  There  were  pears  and  apples,  clustered  pyramids  ; 
there  were  bunches  of  grapes,  made,  in  the  shop-keeper's  be- 
nevolence, to  dangle  from  conspicuous  hooks,  that  people's  mouths 
might  water  gratis  as  they  passed  ;  there  were  piles  of  filberts, 
mossy  and  brown,  recalling,  in  their  fragrance,  ancient  walks 
among  the  woods  and  pleasant  shufflings  ankle  deep  through  with- 
ered leaves  ;  there  were  Norfolk  biffins,  squab  and  swarthy,  set- 
ting off  the  yellow  of  the  oranges  and  lemons,  and,  in  the  great 
compactness  of  their  juicy  persons,  urgently  and  beseechingly 
entreating  to  be  carried  home  in  paper  bags  and  eaten  after  din- 
ner."— A  Christmas  Carol. 

"  They  left  the  high-road  by  a  well-remembered  lane,  and  soon 
approached  a  mansion  of  dull-red  brick,  with  a  little  weather- 
cock-surmounted cupola  on  the  roof  and  a  bell  hanging  in  it.  It 
was  a  large  house,  but  one  of  broken  fortunes  ;  for  the  spacious 
offices  were  little  used  ;  their  walls  were  damp  and  mossy,  their 
windows  broken,  and  their  gates  decayed.  Fowls  clucked  and 
strutted  in  the  stables,  and  the  coach-houses  and  sheds  were 
overrun  with  grass.  Nor  was  it  more  retentive  of  its  ancient  state 


628  DICKENS 

within  ;  for,  entering  the  dreary  hall  and  glancing  through  the 
open  doors  of  many  rooms,  they  found  them  poorly  furnished, 
cold,  and  vast.  There  was  an  earthy  savor  in  the  air,  a  chilly 
bareness  in  the  place,  which  associated  itself  somehow  with  too 
much  getting  up  by  candle-light  and  not  too  much  to  eat."- 
A  Christmas  Carol. 


5.  Tender,  Sometimes  Mawkish,  Pathos.— On  no 

characteristic  of  Dickens  is  there-such  a  sharp  difference  of 
opinion  as  on  his  pathos.  Writers  like  Saintsbury,  Andrew 
Lang,  and  Mrs.  Oliphant  score  him  mercilessly  for  his 
"  mawkish,  melodramatic  sentimentality,"  while  Whipple  and 
the  stern  Jeffrey  have  lauded  him  for  his  tenderness  and  his 
"purified  conception  of  moral  beauty."  There  is  warrant 
for  both  extremes  of  criticism,  and  both  kinds  of  pathos  may 
be  abundantly  illustrated  from  Dickens's  works.  The  truth 
must  be  determined  by  a  general  average  of  the  two  criticisms, 
bearing  in  mind  that  Dickens  aimed  to  touch  the  hearts,  not 
of  critics  but  of  the  common  people — the  class  of  whom  he 
mainly  wrote  and  whom  he  best  knew.  That  he  has  suc- 
ceeded remarkably  in  this  aim,  no  one  will  deny. 

"It  is  this  inability  to  know  where  to  stop  which  has 
brought  discredit  on  his  pathos.  He  really  had 
pathos,  but  he  could  not  be  content  with  a  moderate  dose  of 
it,  and  must  needs  froth  and  whip  and  bedevil  it  till  it  becomes 
half  insipid,  half  fulsome.  .  .  .  He  abounds  in  washy 
pathetics  and  windy  politics,  in  leather-and -prunella  peers  and 
good-young-person  heroines.  ...  In  Dickens  we  always 
feel  the  constant  presence  of  the  theatre — of  the  boards  and 
the  lamps,  the  property-man  and  the  prompter.  .  .  .  Our 
fathers  thought  Little  Nell  and  Little  Paul  almost  excruci- 
atingly pathetic,  while  the  whole  of  my  own  generation  has 
chiefly  yawned  over  them.  I  am  told  that  the  weeping  time 
is  coming  again  soon;  but  this  I  take  leave  to  doubt." — 
Saintsbury. 


DICKENS  629 

"  One  source  of  his  pathos  is  the  intense  and  purified  con- 
ception he  has  of  moral  beauty,  of  that  beauty  which  comes 
from  a  thoughtful  brooding  over  the  most  solemn  and  affecting 
realities  of  life.  .  .  .  He  makes  everybody  cry,  even  his 
hostile  critics ;  but  his  critics  object  that  they  are  made  to 
cry  against  the  rules  ;  that  it  is  sentimentality  they  cry  over 
and  not  pure  sentiment ;  that  it  is  exceedingly  unnatural  to 
have  their  natures  so  deeply  stirred.  Dickens  took  their  tears 
as  the  most  cogent  of  all  answers  to  their  maxims, 
disregarding  the  snarling  protest  they  made  against  the  magi- 
cian who  extorted  from  them  such  irrepressible  drops  of  un- 
critical emotion.  .  .  .  It  is  certain  that  his  genius  can 
as  readily  draw  tears  as  provoke  laughter.  Sorrow,  want, 
poverty,  pain,  and  death  ;  the  affections  which  cling  to  earth 
and  those  which  rise  above  it ;  he  represents  always  with 
power  and  often  with  marvellous  skill." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

11  The  pathos  of  '  Oliver  Twist '  is  mawkish,  as  it  usually  is 
in  Dickens's  works,  and  the  absurdly  melodramatic  story  of 
Oliver's  birth,  with  the  machinations  of  the  impossible  villain 
Monks,  is  little  worthy  of  the  author,  though  he  has  sinned 
repeatedly  in  the  same  way,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  known 
better.  .  .  .  We  are  free  to  admit  that  we  have  no  ad- 
miration at  all  for  Dickens's  sentimental  or  pathetic  passages ; 
we  are  moved  only  to  weariness  by  '  that  Smike's  unceasing 
drivellings  or  those  everlasting  Nells.'  We  feel  no  interest 
in  little  Paul  Dombey,  and  the  maunderings  of  Jo  leave  our 
withers  un wrung." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

' '  His  pathos  is  not  less  true  than  various,  for  the  gradations 
are  marked  between  the  stern  tragic  pathos  of  '  Hard  Times,' 
the  melting  pathos  of  'Old  Curiosity  Shop,'  '  Dombey  and 
Son,1  and  '  David  Copperfield,'  and  the  pathos  of  helplessness 
which  appeals  to  us  in  Smike  and  Jo." — T.  H.  Ward. 

"  His  perception  of  moral  beauty  was  as  refined  as  his  con- 
ceptions were,  in  their  finer  traits,  tender  and  natural. 
Two  or  three  of  his  scenes  and  numerous  incidental  touches 


630  DICKENS 

have  never  been  surpassed,  if  the  heart-felt  tears  of  tens  of 
thousands  of  readers  are  any  test  of  natural  pathos.  .  .  . 
The  only  tragedy  of  Hogarth  and  Dickens  is  the  constant 
tragedy  of  private  life — especially  with  the  poorer  classes." 
— R.  H.  Home, 

"  There  is  no  writer  who  knows  better  how  to  touch  and 
melt;  he  makes  us  weep — absolutely  shed  tears  :  before  read- 
ing him  we  did  not  know  there  was  so  much  pity  in  the  heart. 
The  grief  of  a  child  who  wishes  to  be  loved  by  his  father  and 
whom  his  father  does  not  love,  the  despairing  love  and  slow 
death  of  a  poor  half-imbecile  young  man  ;  all  these  pictures 
of  secret  grief  leave  an  ineffaceable  impression." — Taine. 

"  He  has  naturally  great  powers  of  pathos;  his  imagina- 
tion is  familiar  with  the  common  sort  of  human  suffering, 
and  his  marvellous  conversancy  with  the  detail  of  existence 
enables  him  to  describe  sick-beds  and  death-beds  with  an 
excellence  very  rarely  seen  in  literature — a  nature  far  more 
sympathetic  than  that  of  most  authors  has  familiarized  him 
with  such  subjects." — Walter  Bagehot. 

"  Like  his  humor,  Mr.  Dickens's  pathos  was  in  general  not 
of  the  highest  type.  It  was  very  touching,  and  there  are 
many  passages  in  his  books  that  must  melt  all  but  the  stoniest 
natures.  As  his  humor  always  provokes  laughter,  so  his  pa- 
thos generally  moves  to  tears.  But  laughter  is  not  the  best 
witness  to  the  high  quality  of  humor  nor  tears  to  that  of  pa- 
thos."— Richard  Grant  \Vhite. 

Jeffrey  wrote  to  Dickens  concerning  the  Death  of  Paul 
Dombey  :  "I  have  so  cried  and  sobbed  over  it,  and  felt  my 
heart  purified  by  those  tears,  and  blessed  and  loved  you  for 
making  me  shed  them."  Landor  said  that  Little  Nell  was 
equal  to  any  character  in  fiction,  and  Jeffrey  said,  "  Noth- 
ing so  good  since  Cordelia. ' ' 


DICKENS  631 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  She  was  dead.  No  sleep  so  beautiful  and  calm,  so  free  from 
trace  of  pain,  so  fair  to  look  upon.  .  .  .  Her  couch  was 
dressed  here  and  there  with  some  winter  berries  and  green  leaves 
gathered  in  a  spot  she  had  been  used  to  favor.  '  When  I  die, 
put  me  near  something  that  has  loved  the  light  and  had  the 
sky  above  it  always.'  Those  were  her  words.  She  was  dead. 
Dear,  gentle,  patient,  noble  Nell  was  dead.  Her  little  bird — a 
poor  slight  thing  the  pressure  of  a  finger  would  have  crushed,  was 
stirring  nimbly  in  its  cage  ;  and  the  strong  heart  of  its  child  mis- 
tress was  mute  and  motionless  forever." — Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

"  '  Mr.  Snagsby,'  says  Jo, '  I  went  and  give  a  illness  to  the  lady 
as  wos  and  yit  as  warn't  the  t'other  lady,  and  none  of  'em  never 
says  nothink  to  me  for  having  done  it,  on  accounts  of  their  being 
ser  good  and  my  having  been  s'unfortnet.  The  lady  come  herself 
and  see  me  yesday,  and  she  ses,  "Ah,  Jo  !  "  she  ses,  "  We  thought 
we'd  lost  you,  Jo  !  "  she  ses.  And  she  sits  down  a  smilin'  so  quiet, 
and  don't  pass  a  word  nor  yit  a  look  upon  me  for  having  done  it, 
she  don't,  and  1  turns  agin  the  wall,  I  doos,  Mr.  Snagsby.  And 
Mr.  Jarnders,  I  see  him  forced  to  turn  away  his  own  self.  And 
Mr.  Woodcot,  he  come  fur  to  giv  me  somethink  for  to  ease  me, 
wot  he's  allus  a  doin'  on  day  and  night,  and  wen  he  comes  a 
bendin'  over  me  and  a  speakin"  up  so  bold,  I  see  his  tears  a 
fallin',  Mr.  Snagsby.'"— Bleak  House. 

"  Bob  was  very  cheerful  with  them,  and  spoke  pleasantly  to  all 
the  family.  He  looked  at  the  work  upon  the  table  and  praised 
the  industry  and  speed  of  Mrs.  Cratchit  and  the  girls.  They 
would  be  done  long  before  Sunday. 

"  '  Sunday  !  You  went  to-day,  then,  Robert  ? '  said  his  wife. 

"  '  Yes,  my  dear,'  returned  Bob.  '  I  wish  you  could  have  gone. 
It  would  have  done  you  good  to  see  how  green  a  place  it  is.  But 
you'll  see  it  often.  I  promised  him  that  I  would  walk  there  on 
a  Sunday.  My  little,  little  child  ! '  cried  Bob,  '  my  little  child  ! ' " 
—  Christmas  Carol. 

6.   Gayety — Animal  Spirits — Good-Fellowship. — 

Dickens  was  always  and  everywhere  the  prince  of  "  good  fel- 
lows."    His  joviality  bubbles  up  continually  in  his  writings- 


632  DICKENS 

James  T.  Fields,  who  perhaps  knew  Dickens  personally  better 
than  any  other  American,  calls  him  "  an  incarnation  of  gen- 
erous and  abounding  gayety,  a  type  of  beneficent  earnestness,  a 
great  expression  of  intellectual  vigor  and  emotional  vivacity," 
and  adds  :  "  He  liked  to  dilate  in  imagination  over  the  brew- 
ing of  a  bowl  of  punch,  but  I  always  noticed  that,  when  the 
punch  was  ready,  he  drank  less  of  it  than  anyone  who  might 
be  present."  And  Mr.  Dolby,  who  was  Dickens's  business 
manager  during  his  memorable  reading  tours  in  England  and 
America — a  man  who  lived  and  dined  with  the  novelist  daily 
for  months  together — says  :  "  Although  he  so  frequently  both 
wrote  and  talked  about  eating  and  drinking,  I  have  seldom 
met  a  man  who  partook  less  freely  of  the  kindly  fare  placed 
before  him."  These  direct  and  positive  testimonies  from 
Dickens's  intimate  friends  and  associates  should  set  at  rest  the 
consciences  of  those  good  people  who  have  been  troubled  by 
what  appeared  to  be  the  novelist's  excessive  conviviality. 

"  He  has  an  exuberance  of  animal  spirits — a  surplus  vitality 
like   that   which   makes    him,   after   signing  his  name  to  a 
letter   or    note,    give  such  a  whirl  of  flourishing. 
Sometimes  his  humour  not  only  takes  the  show  of  mere  animal 
spirits,  but  may  be  said  to  depend  solely  on  them. 
His  boisterous  fun  and  good-humour  are  like  Smollett's,  with 
this  advantage,  that  to  find  his  best  things  we  have  not  to  go 
to  a  dunghill  and  scratch  them  out." — S.  Davey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"In  came  a  fiddler  with  a  music  book,  and  went  up  to  the 
lofty  desk,  and  made  an  orchestra  of  it.  In  came  Mrs.  Fezziwig, 
one  vast  substantial  smile.  In  came  the  three  Misses  Fezziwig, 
beaming  and  lovable.  In  came  the  six  young  followers  whose 
hearts  they  broke.  In  came  all  the  young  men  and  women  em- 
ployed in  the  business.  In  came  the  house-maid,  with  her  cousin, 
the  baker.  In  came  the  cook,  with  her  brother's  particular 
friend,  the  milkman.  In  they  all  came,  one  after  another ;  some 


DICKENS  633 

shyly,  some  boldly,  some  gracefully,  some  awkwardly,  some 
pushing,  some  pulling ;  in  they  all  came  anyhow  and  everyhow. 
Away  they  all  went,  twenty  couples  at  once  ;  hands  half  round 
and  back  again  the  other  way  ;  down  the  middle  and  up  again  ; 
round  and  round  in  various  stages  of  affectionate  grouping ;  old 
top  couple  always  turning  up  in  the  wrong  place  ;  new  top  cou- 
ple starting  off  again  as  soon  as  they  got  there  ;  all  top  couples 
at  last,  and  not  a  bottom  one  to  help  them  !  When  this  result 
was  brought  about,  old  Fezziwig,  clapping  his  hands  to  stop  the 
dance,  cried  out  :  '  Well  done  ! '  and  the  fiddler  plunged  his  hot 
face  into  a  pot  of  porter,  especially  provided  for  that  purpose." 
— A  Christmas  Carol. 

11  Then  up  rose  Mrs.  Cratchit,  Cratchit's  wife,  dressed  out  but 
poorly  in  a  twice-turned  gown,  but  brave  in  ribbons,  which  are 
cheap  and  make  a  goodly  show  for  sixpence  ;  and  she  laid  the 
cloth,  assisted  by  Belinda  Cratchit,  second  of  her  daughters,  also 
brave  in  ribbons,  while  Master  Peter  Cratchit  plunged  a  fork 
into  the  saucepan  of  potatoes,  and  getting  the  corners  of  his 
monstrous  shirt-collar  (Bob's  private  property,  conferred  upon 
his  son  and  heir  in  honor  of  the  day)  into  his  mouth,  rejoiced  to 
find  himself  so  gallantly  attired,  and  yearned  to  show  his  linen 
in  the  fashionable  parks.  And  now  two  smaller  Cratchits,  boy 
and  girl,  came  tearing  in,  screaming  that  outside  the  baker's 
they  had  smelt  the  goose,  and  known  it  for  their  own  ;  and  bask- 
ing in  luxurious  thoughts  of  sage  and  onion,  these  young  Cratch- 
its  danced  about  the  table  and  exalted  Master  Peter  Cratchit 
to  the  skies,  while  he  (not  proud,  although  his  collar  nearly 
choked  him)  blew  the  fire,  until  the  slow  potatoes,  bubbling  up, 
knocked  loudly  at  the  sauce-pan  lid  to  be  let  out  and  peeled." 
— A  Christmas  Carol. 

"  It  was  a  perfect  embodiment  of  the  still  small  voice,  free 
from  all  cold,  hoarseness,  huskiness,  or  unhealthiness  of  any  kind. 
Foot-passengers  slackened  their  pace,  and  were  disposed  to  lin- 
ger near  it  ;  neighbors  who  had  got  up  splenetic  that  morning 
felt  good-humor  stealing  on  them  as  they  heard  it,  and  by  de- 
grees became  quite  sprightly  ;  mothers  danced  their  babies  to 
its  ringing  ; — still  the  same  magical  tink,  link,  tink,  came  gaily 
from  the  work-shop  of  the  Golden  Key.  Who  but  the  locksmith 
could  have  made  such  music  ?  A  gleam  of  sun  shining  through 
the  unsashed  window  and  checkering  the  dark  workshop  with  a 


634  DICKENS 

broad  patch  of  light,  fell  full  upon  him,  as  though  attracted  by 
his  sunny  heart.  There  he  stood  working  at  his  anvil,  his  face 
radiant  with  exercise  and  gladness,  his  sleeves  turned  up,  his 
wig  pushed  off  his  shining  forehead — the  easiest,  freest,  happiest 
man  in  all  the  world." — Bartiaby  Rudge. 


7.  Sincerity — Manliness  —  Earnestness.  Thomas 
Carlyle,  who  has  never  been  noted  as  a  flatterer,  called  his 
vivacious  contemporary  "a  most  cordial,  sincere,  clear-sighted, 
quietly  decisive,  just  and  loving  man.  ...  A  quiet, 
shrewd-looking  little  fellow,  who  seems  to  guess  pretty  well 
what  he  is  and  what  others  are."  Forster,  Dickens's  match- 
less biographer,  observes  that  in  "  Our  Mutual  Friend"  the 
novelist  "  pictures  rare  veracity  of  soul  amid  the  lowest  forms 
of  social  degradation,  placed  beside  others  of  sheer  falsehood 
and  pretence  amid  unimpeachable  social  correctness,"  and 
adds,  "Whatever  Dickens  was,  he  was  thoroughly."  Dick- 
ens's most  hostile  critics  have  never  found  reason  to  sug- 
gest that  there  is  anything  in  his  writings  that  suggests  or 
fosters  impurity  in  thought. 

"  The  author  was  not  a  mere  jester  and  story-teller,  but  a 
true  philanthropist  and  reformer.  .  .  .  He  has  generally 
a  moral  purpose  in  view.  He  never  panders  to  popular  preju- 
dices, but  boldly  rebukes  vice  in  whatever  rank  he  finds  it. 
Dickens  abhorred  a  sham  with  his  whole  soul. 
.  He  was  the  soul  of  truth  and  manliness  as  well  as 
kindness." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"And  it  is  pleasant  to  write  that  they  reared  a  family;  be- 
cause any  propagation  of  goodness  and  benevolence  is  no  small 
addition  to  the  aristocracy  of  nature  and  no  small  subject  of  re- 
joicing for  mankind  at  large." — Old  Curiosity  Shop. 

"  For  the  Bachelor  was  one  of  those  whose  goodness  shuns  the 
light,  and  who  have  more  pleasure  in  discovering  and  extolling 


DICKENS  635 

the  good  deeds  of  others  than  -a  trumpeting  their  own.  .  .  . 
Thank  God  that  the  innocent  joys  of  others  can  strongly  move 
us,  and  that  we,  even  in  our  fallen  nature,  have  one  source  of 
pure  emotion  which  must  be  prized  in  Heaven." — Old  Curiosity 
Shop. 

"  '  Oh,  Miss  Dombey,'  he  said,  '  is  it  possible  that  while  I  have 
been  suffering  so  much  in  striving  with  my  sense  of  what  is  due 
to  you,  and  must  be  rendered  to  you,  I  have  made  you  suffer 
what  your  words  disclose  to  me  ?  Never,  never  before  Heaven, 
have  I  thought  of  you  but  as  the  single,  bright,  pure,  blessed 
recollection  of  my  boyhood  and  my  youth.  Never  have  I  from 
the  first,  and  never  shall  I  till  the  last  regard  your  part  in  my 
life  but  as  something  sacred,  never  to  be  lightly  thought  of,  never 
to  be  esteemed  enough,  never,  until  death,  to  be  forgotten ! ' " 
— Dombey  and  Son, 


8.  Broad  Sympathy — Plain,  Practical  Humanity. 

— If  the  most  prominent  surface  characteristic  of  Dickens  is 
his  humor,  especially  his  fondness  for  caricature,  his  crown- 
ing glory  is  his  sympathy. 

"  In  painting  character,  he  is  troubled  by  no  uneasy  sense 
of  himself.  .  .  .  His  mind,  by  the  readiness  with  which 
it  generally  assimilates  other  minds,  .  .  .  grows  with 
every  exercise  of  its  powers.  .  .  .  Had  he  been  an  ego- 
tist, devoured  with  a  ravenous  vanity  for  personal  display, 
his  talents  would  hardly  have  made  him  known 
beyond  the  street  in  which  he  lived.  .  .  .  His  fellow- 
feeling  with  the  race  is  his  genius.  The  humanity,  .  .  . 
the  recognition  of  the  virtues  which  obtain  among  the  poor 
and  humble,  so  observable  in  the  works  of  Dickens,  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  age.  .  .  .  Dickens  commonly  surveys 
human  nature  from  the  position  of  charity  and  love. 
He  makes  us  love  our  kind  not  only  in  its  exhibitions  of  moral 
beauty  but  also  when  frailties  mingle  with  its  excellence.  .  .  . 
He  continues  to  effect  that  reconciliation  of  charity  and  mo- 
rality by  which  our  sympathy  with  weakness  and  toleration 


636  DICKENS 

of  error  never  run  into  a  morbid  sentimentality.  .  .  . 
He  evolves  beautiful  and  heroic  qualities  from  heroic  souls. 
He  makes  the  fact  that  happiness  and  virtue  are  not 
confined  to  any  one  class  a  reality  to  the  mind.  .  .  .  The 
materials  for  numberless  characters  are  within  the  reach  of  all 
novelists,  but  most  of  them  are  ridden  by  some  nightmare  of 
dignity  or  gentility  which  compels  them  to  pass  by  the  hero 
in  the  alley  for  some  piece  of  etiquette  or  broadcloth  in  the 
drawing-room.  .  .  .  The  one  test  of  merit  in  Dickens- 
land  is  goodness  of  heart ;  and  it  contains  a  considerable 
number  of  highly  esteemed  persons  in  whom  this  quality  is 
connected  with  confusion  of  head.  Alone  among  his  con- 
temporaries Charles  Dickens  seems  to  possess  that  instinctive 
sympathy  with  whatever  is  human  and  humane,  which  is  the 
fundamental  condition  of  genial  and  varied  characterization. 
In  impersonated  abstractions  of  humanity  which  satisfy  our 
human  nature  he  may  be  excelled  ;  in  individualities  which 
make  us  in  love  with  our  kind  he  is  unapproached." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  He  was  the  best  beloved  of  modern  writers  almost  from 
the  outset  of  his  career.  ...  He  loved  his  fellow-men, 
and  did  more  to  make  them  happy  and  amiable  than  any  other 
writer  of  his  time." — W.  E.  Henley, 

"The  philosophy  of  Dickens  certainly  is  the  professed 
philosophy  of  kindliness,  of  a  genial  interest  in  all  things  great 
and  small,  of  a  light  English  joyousness  and  a  sunny  universal 
benevolence.  .  .  .  Whatever  practice,  institution,  or 
mode  of  thinking  is  adverse,  in  Mr.  Dickens's  view,  to  natural 
enjoyment  and  festivity,  against  that  he  makes  war.  .  .  . 
His  philosophy  may  be  denned  as  anti-Puritanism." — David 
Masson. 

1 '  It  was  his  mission  to  make  people  happy.  Words  of  good 
cheer  were  native  to  his  lips  ;  and  he  was  always  doing  what 
he  could  to  lighten  the  lot  of  all  who  came  into  his  beautiful 
presence.  .  .  .  We  content  ourselves  with  what  he  was — 


DICKENS  637 

a  lover  of  his  kind,  a  friend  of  the  friendless,  a  champion  of 
the  poor,  the  degraded,  the  outcast,  the  forlorn.  His  career 
was  a  prolonged  beneficence  to  his  fellow -beings.  It  may 
be  said  of  his  books  that  they  made  a  circumnavigation  of 
charity." — J.  T.  Fields. 

"  I  may  quarrel  with  Mr.  Dickens's  art  a  thousand  and  a 
thousand  times ;  I  delight  and  wonder  at  his  genius.  I  rec- 
ognize it — I  speak  with  awe  and  reverence — as  a  commission 
from  that  Divine  Beneficence  whose  blessed  task  we  know  it 
will  one  day  be  to  wipe  every  tear  from  every  eye." — 
Thackeray. 

"  He  helped  to  blot  out  the  hard  line  which  too  often 
severs  class  from  class,  and  made  Englishmen  feel  more  as  one 
family  than  they  had  ever  felt  before.  .  .  .  He  has  taught 
his  countrymen  the  eternal  value  of  generosity,  purity,  kind- 
ness, and  unselfishness.  .  .  .  The  distress  of  the  poor  of 
England,  he  used  to  say,  pierced  through  his  happiness,  and 
haunted  him  day  and  night.  .  .  .  By  him  that  veil  was 
rent  asunder  which  parts  the  various  classes  of  society. 
Through  his  genius  the  rich  man,  faring  sumptuously  every 
day,  was  made  to  feel  the  presence  of  Lazarus  at  his  gate. 
The  unhappy  inmates  of  the  work-house,  the  neglected  chil- 
dren of  the  dens  and  caves  of  our  great  cities,  the  starved  and 
ill-used  boys  in  remote  schools,  far  from  the  observation  of 
men,  felt  that  a  new  ray  of  sunshine  was  poured  on  their  dark 
existence." — Dean  Stanley. 

"  First  among  his  natural  gifts  must  be  placed  what  may 
in  a  word  be  called  his  sensibility — that  quality  of  which 
humour,  in  the  more  limited  sense  of  the  word,  and  pathos  are 
the  twin  products.  .  .  .  To  him  the  voiceless  cause  of 
the  suffering  and  the  oppressed  was  at  all  times  dearer  than 
any  literary  success.  .  .  .  His  sympathy  with  the  afflictions 
of  the  hearth  and  the  home  knew  almost  no  bounds.  .  .  . 
He  was  tender  with  the  tenderness  of  Cowper,  playful  with 
the  playfulness  of  Goldsmjdh,  natural  with  the  naturalness  of 


638  DICKENS 

Fielding.  .  .  .  He  conscientiously  addressed  himself,  as 
to  the  task  of  his  life,  to  the  endeavour  to  knit  humanity  to- 
gether."—^. IV.  Ward. 

"He  set  in  motion  the  secret  springs  of  sympathy  by 
touching  the  domestic  affections.  .  .  .  He  spoke  in  the 
mother- tongue  of  the  heart,  and  was  always  sure  of  listen- 
ers."— G.  H.  Lewes. 

"He  had  a  deep  pity,  a  deep  sympathy  (and  no  idle  or 
barren  one)  for  the  poor  and  especially  the  hard-working 
poor.  He  could  indicate  and  emphasize  the  absurdities  of 
their  manner  and  speech,  their  awkward  gestures,  bad  gram- 
mar, inelegant  pronunciation,  without  one  touch  to  feed  the 
contempt  of  the  most  cynical  or  the  most  ill-natured  hearer; 
and  he  inculcated  at  every  moment,  directly  or  indirectly, 
the  lesson  of  brotherly  kindness." — Anthony  Trollope. 

After  reading  the  "  Christmas  Carol"  [published  in  1843] 
Jeffrey  wrote  to  Dickens  :  "Be  sure  you  have  done  more 
good  and  not  only  fostered  more  kindly  feeling,  but  prompted 
more  positive  acts  of  benevolence  by  this  little  publication 
than  can  be  traced  to  all  the  pulpits  and  confessionals  since 
1842."  In  his  second  and  greatest  series  of  readings  in  Eng- 
land [1866]  Dickens  expressly  stipulated  that  shilling  seat- 
holders  should  have  as  good  accommodation  as  those  who 
were  willing  to  pay  higher  sums  for  their  evening's  enjoyment. 
He  said,  "  I  have  been  the  champion  and  friend  of  the  work- 
ing man  all  through  my  career,  and  it  would  be  inconsistent, 
if  not  unjust,  to  put  any  difficulty  in  the  way  of  his  attending 
my  readings."  After  first  seeing  Venice,  Dickens  wrote: 
"  When  I  saw  those  palaces,  how  I  thought  that  to  leave  one's 
hand  upon  the  time,  lastingly  upon  the  time,  with  one  tender 
touch  for  the  mass  of  toiling  people  that  nothing  could  oblit- 
erate, would  be  to  lift  one's  self  above  the  dust  of  all  Doges  in 
their  graves."  And  again,  "I  wish  we  were  all  in  Eden 
again,  for  the  sake  of  these  toiling  creatures."  Daniel  Web- 
ster hardly  exaggerated  when  he  said:  "Dickens  has  done 


DICKENS  639 

more  to  ameliorate  the  condition  of  the  English  poor  than  all 
the  statesmen  Great  Britain  has  sent  to  Parliament." 

"  The  stabs  of  his  satire  are  never  of  a  morbid,  misanthrop- 
ical kind.  .  .  .  They  will  almost  invariably  be  found 
directed  against  social  wrongs,  '  the  insolence  of  office,' 
against  false  notions  of  honor,  against  mere  external  respect- 
ability."— R.  H.  Home. 

"Dickens  wrote  as  a  philanthropist.  His  purpose  was 
a  lovely  and  a  noble  one — to  teach  us  charity.  He  did  not 
labor  in  vain.  The  world  is  better,  purer,  gentler,  more  lov- 
ing and  forgiving  for  the  thirty  years  of  Charles  Dickens's  la- 
borious life ;  and  he  goes  to  his  rest  followed  by  the  blessings 
due  to  a  benefactor  of  mankind." — Richard  Grant  ]Vhite. 

"The  deep,  rich,  cheery  voice;  the  brave  and  noble 
countenance  ;  the  hand  that  had  the  fire  of  friendship  in  its 
grip — all  played  their  part  in  comforting  in  a  moment  the  creat- 
ure who  had  come  to  Charles  Dickens  for  advice,  for  help, 
for  sympathy." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

' '  The  light  is  come  upon  the  dark  benighted  way.  Dead ! 
Dead,  your  Majesty.  Dead,  my  lords  and  gentlemen.  Dead, 
Right  Reverends  and  Wrong  Reverends  of  every  order.  Dead, 
men  and  women,  born  with  heavenly  compassion  in  your  hearts. 
And  dying  thus  around  us  every  day !  "  — Bleak  House. 

"If  those  who  rule  the  destinies  of  nations  would  remember 
this — if  they  would  but  turn  aside  from  the  wide  thoroughfares 
and  the  great  houses  and  strive  to  improve  the  wretched 
dwellings  in  by-ways  where  only  poverty  may  walk — many  low 
roofs  would  point  more  truly  to  the  sky  than  the  loftiest  steeple 
that  now  rears  proudly  up  from  the  midst  of  guilt  and  crime 
and  horrible  disease  to  mock  them  by  its  contrast." — Old  Curi- 
osity Shop. 

"  Again  the  Ghost  sped  on,  above  the  black  and  heaving  sea — 
on,  on — until,  being  far  away,  as  he  told  Scrooge,  from  any 
shore,  they  lighted  on  a  ship.  They  stood  beside  the  helmsman 


640  DICKENS 

at  the  wheel,  the  lookout  in  the  bow,  the  officers  who  had  the 
watch  ;  dark,  ghostly  figures  in  their  several  stations  ;  but  every 
man  among  them  hummed  a  Christmas  tune,  or  had  a  Christmas 
thought,  or  spoke  below  his  breath  to  his  companion  of  some  by- 
gone Christinas  day,  with  homeward  hopes  belonging  to  it.  And 
every  man  on  board,  waking  or  sleeping,  good  or  bad,  had  had 
a  kinder  word  for  one  another  on  that  day  than  on  any  day  in  the 
year  ;  and  had  shared  to  some  extent  in  its  festivities ;  and  had 
remembered  those  he  cared  for  at  a  distance,  and  had  known 
that  they  delighted  to  remember  him." — A  Christmas  Carol. 

9.  Dramatic  Power. — If  any  argument  were  needed  to 
prove  Dickens  a  born  dramatist,  it  might  be  found  in  the  his- 
tory of  his  own  marvellous  readings  from  his  works  and  in  that 
of  the  dramatizations  of  his  plays.  It  has  been  well  said,  "  If 
he  had  not  been  a  great  writer,  he  would  have  been  a  great 
actor. ' ' 

"He  has  great  tragic  power.  It  would  be  useless,  in  our 
limits,  to  attempt  to  give  illustrations  of  his  closeness  to  nat- 
ure in  delineating  the  deeper  passions,  his  profound  observa- 
tion of  the  workings  of  the  soul  when  stained  with  crime  and 
looking  forward  to  death;  his  skill  in  gifting  remorse,  fear, 
avarice,  hatred,  and  revenge  with  their  appropriate  language, 
and  his  subtle  appreciation  of  the  influence  exercised  by  differ- 
ent moods  of  the  mind  in  modifying  the  appearances  of  exter- 
nal objects." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Who  has  so  depicted  the  dismayed  and  conscience- 
stricken  murderer,  his  soul  haunted  and  lashed  by  the  aveng- 
ing furies,  the  eternal  wakefulness  of  his  fevered  brain,  the 
torment  of  unceasing  restlessness,  the  thousand  dreadful  eyes 
that  leer  at  him,  and  the  thousand  voices  that  hoot  at  him 
from  morn  till  night?" — S.  Davey. 

"  His  imaginative  power  and  dramatic  instinct  combined 
to  produce  an  endless  succession  of  effective  scenes  and  situa- 
tions. .  .  .  In  no  direction  was  nature  a  more  powerful 
aid  to  art  with  him  than  in  this.  From  his  very  boyhood  he 


DICKENS  641 

seems  to  have  possessed  .  .  .  the  faculty  of  converting 
into  a  scene — putting  as  it  were  into  a  frame — personages  that 
came  under  his  notice  and  the  background  on  which  he  saw 
them.  .  .  .  His  genius  exercises  a  particularly  strong 
spell  in  those  scenes  that  precede  a  catastrophe,  which  are 
charged  like  thunder-clouds  with  the  coming  storm.  And 
here  the  constructive  art  is  at  work ;  for  it  is  the  same  arrange- 
ment of  incidents,  past  and  to  come,  combined  by  anticipa- 
tion in  the  mind  of  the  reader,  which  gives  their  extraordi- 
nary force  to  such  scenes." — A.  W.  Ward. 

"  He  has  no  developed  tragic  character  and  no  pathetic, 
but  he  often  places  his  personages  in  tragic  and  pathetic  situa- 
tions, and  makes  a  strong  impression  mainly  by  his  own  con- 
viction and  earnestness  and  his  thorough  working  out  of  his 
intention." — Anthony  Trollope. 

'"Nicholas  Nickleby'  established  beyond  dispute  Dickens's 
mastery  of  dialogue,  or  that  power  of  making  characters  real 
existences,  not  by  describing  them  but  by  letting  them  de- 
scribe themselves,  which  belongs  only  to  story-tellers  of  the 
first  rank." — -John  Forster. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  was  a^un  hanging  on  the  wall.  He  took  it  down  and 
moved  a  pace  or  two  toward  the  door  of  the  perfidious  stranger's 
room.  He  knew  the  gun  was  loaded.  Some  shadowy  idea  that 
it  was  just  to  shoot  this  man  like  a  wild  beast  seized  him,  and  di- 
lated in  his  mind  until  it  grew  into  a  monstrous  demon  in  com- 
plete possession  of  him,  casting  out  all  milder  thoughts  and  set- 
ting up  its  undivided  empire.  That  phrase  is  wrong.  Not 
casting  out  his  milder  thoughts  but  artfully  transforming  them. 
Changing  them  into  scourges  to  drive  him  on.  Turning  water 
into  blood,  love  into  hate,  gentleness  into  blind  ferocity.  Her 
image,  sorrowing,  humbled,  but  still  pleading  to  his  tenderness 
and  mercy  with  resistless  power,  never  left  his  mind  ;  but  staying 
there,  it  urged  him  to,  the  door  ;  raised  the  weapon  to  his  shoul- 
der ;  fitted  and  nerved  his  finger  to  the  trigger  ;  and  cried  '  Kill 


642  DICKENS 

him  !  In  his  bed  ! '  He  reversed  the  gun  to  beat  the  stock  upon 
the  door ;  already  held  it  lifted  in  the  air  ;  some  indistinct  de- 
sign was  in  his  thoughts  of  calling  out  to  him  to  fly,  for  God's 
sake,  by  the  window —  When,  suddenly,  the  struggling  fire  il- 
lumined the  whole  chimney  with  a  glow  of  light ;  and  the  Cricket 
on  the  Hearth  began  to  chirp  !  " — The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth. 

"  Down  and  up  and  headforemost  on  the  steps  of  the  building  ; 
now  on  his  knees  ;  now  on  his  feet ;  now  on  his  back  ;  dragged 
and  struck  at  and  stifled  with  the  bunches  of  grass  and  straw  that 
were  thrust  into  his  face  by  hundreds  of  hands  ;  torn,  bruised, 
panting,  bleeding,  yet  always  entre'ating  and  beseeching  for 
mercy,  ...  he  was  hauled  to  the  nearest  street  corner, 
where  one  of  the  fatal  lamps  swung.  .  .  .  Once  he  went  aloft 
and  the  rope  broke,  and  they  caught  him  shrieking  ;  twice  he 
went  aloft  and  the  rope  broke,  and  they  caught  him  shrieking ; 
then  the  rope  was  merciful  and  held  him,  and  his  head  was  soon 
on  a  pike." — A  Tale  of  Two  Cities. 

"  Squeers  had  caught  the  boy  firmly  in  his  grip  ;  one  desperate 
cut  had  fallen  on  his  body  ;  it  was  raised  again,  and  again  about 
to  fall — when  Nicholas  Nickleby  suddenly  started  up  and  cried, 

"  '  Stop  ! '  in  a  voice  that  made  the  rafters  ring. 

"  '  Who  cried  stop  ? '  cried  Squeers  in  a  shriek — 

"  '  I,'  said  Nicholas,  stepping  forward.  '  This  must  not  go 
on.' 

"  '  Must  not  go  on  ?  ' 

" '  No  ! '  thundered  Nicholas.  .  .  .  '  You  have  disregarded 
all  my  quiet  interference  in  this  miserable  lad's  behalf;  you  have 
returned  no  answer  to  the  letter  in  which  I  begged  forgiveness  for 
him  and  offered  to  be  responsible  that  he  would  remain  quietly 
here.  Don't  blame  me  for  this  public  interference.  You  have 
brought  it  upon  yourself  ;  not  I.1 

"  '  Sit  down,  beggar ! '  screamed  Squeers,  almost  beside  him- 
self with  rage,  and  seizing  Smike  as  he  spoke. 

"  '  Wretch ! '  rejoined  Nicholas,  fiercely,  '  touch  him  at  your 
peril !  I  will  not  stand  by  and  see  it  done.  My  blood  is  up,  and 
I  have  the  strength  of  ten  such  men  as  you.  Look  to  yourself, 
for,  by  Heaven !  I  will  not  spare  you,  if  you  drive  me  on.'  " — 
Nicholas  Nickleby. 


DICKENS  643 

10.  Vulgarity — Artificiality. — Much  as  one  of  his  ad- 
mirers would  like  so  to  do,  it  would  be  unjust  to  the  readers 
of  this  volume  if  the  author  should  fail  to  mention  a  char- 
acteristic that  is  noted  by  nearly  all  the  critics  of  Dickens, 
friendly  as  well  as  hostile. 

"  It  is  only  when  he  approaches  the  delineation  of  gentility, 
or  attempts  the  attitude  of  philosophic  satire,  that  he  exhibits 
traces  of  the  one  unpardonable  thing  ;  and  his  vulgarest  book, 
his  one  book  tainted  with  incurable,  hopeless  vulgarity,  is  his 
'  Child's  History  of  England.'  .  .  .  As  a  terrorist  and  a 
manufacturer  of  villains  with  a  capital  V,  Dickens  has,  I  be- 
lieve, from  the  first  been  exposed  to  the  doubts  and  sneers  of 
callous  heretics.  ...  [I  am  surprised]  by  the  astonishingly 
vague  and  unpractical  character  of  the  optimism  which  in- 
spired such  alternatives  as  the  novelist  suggested  or  seemed  to 
suggest  [for  the  evils  of  the  social  system],  .  .  .  Except 
among  those  readers  who  had  no  more  knowledge  of  the  sub- 
ject than  tkeir  author,  it  was  impossible  that  many,  even 
from  the  first,  should  not  be  struck  with  the  almost  incon- 
ceivable ignorance  [of  Dickens]  of  all  of  the  upper  class  and 
a  large  part  of  the  middle  class  which  his  books  displayed. 
His  soldier-officers,  his  clergymen,  his  scholars,  his 
miscellaneous  gentlemen,  much  more  his  baronets  and  his 
peers,  were  like  nothing  that  lives  and  moves  on  any  part  of 
the  earth  except  the  boards  of  the  stage.  Rose  Maylie  and 
Kate  Nickleby  are  not  live  girls  but  wax  dolls." — Saintsbury. 

"  I  demur  to  the  common  assertion  that  Dickens  could  not 
draw  a  gentleman.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that  it  very  rarely 
suited  his  purpose  to  do  so,  supposing  the  term  to  include 
manners  as  well  as  feelings." — A.  W.  Ward. 

"  Ladies  and  gentlemen  were  out  of  Dickens's  sphere  alto- 
gether ;  and  though  the  greater  part  of  his  life  as  a  successful 
and  famous  man  was  spent  in  their  society,  he  never  learned 
to  draw  them.  .  .  .  Such  totally  unreal  personages  as 
Ralph  Nickleby,  Sir  Mulberry  Hawk,  Steerforth,  Quilp,  Mr. 


644  DICKENS 

Dombey,  and  Sir  Leicester  Dedlock  may,  perhaps,  have  their 
counterparts  in  the  waters  under  the  earth,  but  certainly  in 
the  other  localities  mentioned  in  the  second  Commandment 
their  like  has  not  been  seen.  .  .  .  The  pure  and  blame- 
less heroines  such  as  Agnes,  .  .  .  when  they  are  not  utterly 
insignificant,  are  still  more  completely  without  interest.  One 
page  of  the  Marchioness  is  worth  all  the  Kates  and  Ruths 
put  together.  It  is  an  amiable  fault  to  paint  virtues  in  the 
finest  colors,  but  it  is  unfortunate  when  they  are  mere  streaks 
of  pure  white  such  as  fatigue  the  eye  to  rest  upon." — Mrs. 
Oliphant. 

"  Nor  had  he  the  gift  of  drawing  any  noble  gentlewomen — 
his  women  are  at  the  best  but  dolls — nor  any  fine,  true-hearted 
gentleman.  .  .  .  One  of  Thackeray's  men  or  Charles 
Reade's  women  is  worth  a  cart-load  of  Dickens's  middle- 
class  dolls." — -J.  H.  Friswell. 

In  reply  to  such  criticisms  as  the  three  last  quoted,  Richard 
Hengist  Home  exclaims,  concerning  the  description  of  the 
pauper  funeral  in  "  Oliver  Twist :  "  "  O  ye  scions  of  a  refined 
age — readers  of  the  scrupulous  taste,  who,  here  and  there,  in 
apprehensive  circles,  exclaim  upon  Dickens  as  a  low  writer 
and  lover  of  low  scenes — look  at  this  passage — find  out  how 
low  it  is — and  rise  up  from  the  contemplation  chastened,  puri- 
fied— wiser  because  sorrow-softened  and  better  men  through 
the  enlargement  of  your  sympathies!  .  .  .  Perhaps  the 
reason  why  Dickens  never  successfully  paints  the  upper  classes 
is  because  there  is  little,  if  any,  humour  or  genuine  wit  in  the 
upper  classes,  where  all  gusto  of  that  kind  is  polished  away." 

"He  rioted  in  verbal  vulgarisms.  ...  He  sinned  re- 
peatedly against  taste.  .  .  .  He  could  be  both  noisy  and 
vulgar." — W.  E.  Henley. 

"  The  vulgarity  of  his  attempt  at  aristocracy — his  lords  and 
baronets — is  woful.  .  .  .  We  are  inclined  to  predict  of 
works  of  this  style  that  an  ephemeral  popularity  will  be  fol- 
lowed by  an  early  oblivion."— -J,  W.  Croker. 


DICKENS  645 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  '  Mr.  Jarndyce,'  said  Sir  Leicester  in  reply,  as  he  bowed  and 
seated  himself,  '  I  do  myself  the  honor  of  calling  here ' 

"  '  You  do  me  the  honor,  Sir  Leicester.' 

"  'Thank  you — of  calling  here  on  my  road  from  Lincolnshire 
to  express  my  regret  that  any  cause  of  complaint,  however  strong, 
that  I  may  have  against  a  gentleman  who — who  is  known  to  you 
and  has  been  your  host,  and  to  whom  therefore  I  will  make  no 
further  reference,  should  have  prevented  you,  still  more  ladies 
under  your  escort,  from  seeing  whatever  there  may  be  to  gratify 
a  polite  and  refined  taste  at  my  house,  Chesney  Wold. 
It  is  possible,  Mr.  Jarndyce,  that  the  gentleman  to  whom,  for 
the  reasons  I  have  mentioned,  I  refrain  from  making  further  al- 
lusion— it  is  possible,  Mr.  Jarndyce,  that  that  gentleman  may 
have  done  me  the  honor  so  far  to  misapprehend  my  character  as 
to  induce  you  to  believe  that  you  would  not  have  been  received 
by  my  local  establishment  in  Lincolnshire  with  that  urbanity, 
that  courtesy,  which  its  members  are  instructed  to  show  to  all 
ladies  and  gentlemen  who  present  themselves  at  that  house.  I 
merely  beg  to  observe,  sir,  that  the  fact  is  the  reverse.'  " — Bleak 
House. 

"  '  I  am  afraid  you  have  been  giving  her  some  of  your  wicked 
looks,  my  lord,'  said  the  intended. 

"  '  No,  no,  no,'  replied  the  old  lord,  '  no,  no,  I'm  going  to  be 
married  and  lead  a  new  life.  Ha,  ha,  ha  !  a  new  life,  a  new  life  ! 
ha,  ha,  ha  ! '  .  . 

"  '  I  hope  you  don't  think  good  looks  a  disqualification  for  the 
business,  my  lord,'  said  Madame  Mantalini,  simpering. 

<:'Not  by  any  means,'  replied  the  old  lord,  'or  you  would 
have  left  it  long  ago.' 

'•  '  You  naughty  creature,'  said  the  lively  lady,  poking  the  peer 
with  her  parasol ;  '  I  won't  have  you  talk  so.  How  dare  you  ? 
Nay,  you  bad  man,  you  positively  shall  go  first ;  I 
wouldn't  leave  you  behind  with  that  pretty  girl,  not  for  half  a 
second.  I  know  you  too  well.  Jane,  my  dear,  let  him  go  first, 
and  we  shall  be  quite  sure  of  him.' 

"  The  old  lord,  evidently  much  flattered  by  this  suspicion,  be- 
stowed a  grotesque  leer  upon  Kate  as  he  passed  ;  and,  receiving 


646  DICKENS 

another  tap  of  the  parasol  for  his  wickedness,  tottered  down 
stairs  to  the  door,  where  his  sprightly  body  was  hoisted  into  the 
carriage  by  two  stout  footmen." — Nicholas  Nickleby. 

"  '  An  unexpected  playsure,  Nickleby,'  said  Lord  Frederick 
Verisopht,  taking  his  glass  out  of  his  right  eye,  where  it  had,  un- 
til now,  done  duty  on  Kate,  and  fixing  it  in  his  left,  to  bring  it  to 
bear  on  Ralph. 

"  '  Designed  to  surprise  you,  Lord  Frederick,'  said  Mr.  Pluck. 

"  'Not  a  bad  idea,'  said  his  lordship,  '  and  one  that  would  al- 
most warrant  the  addition  of  an  extra  two  and  a  half  per  cent.' 

"  '  Nickleby,'  said  Sir  Mulberry  Hawk,  in  a  thick,  coarse  voice, 
'  take  the  hint  and  tack  it  on  to  the  other  five-and-twenty,  or 
whatever  it  is,  and  give  me  half  for  the  advice.' 

"Sir  Mulberry  garnished  this  speech  with  a  hoarse  laugh, 
and  terminated  it  with  a  pleasant  oath  regarding  Mr.  Nickle- 
by's  limbs,  whereat  Messrs.  Pike  and  Pluck  laughed  consumedly. 
.  .  .  Verisopht,  who  was  to  lead  Kate  down  stairs,  drew  her 
arm  through  his  up  to  the  elbow. 

" '  No,  damn  it,  Verisopht,'  said  Sir  Mulberry,  '  fair  play's  a 
jewel,  and  Miss  Nickleby  and  I  settled  the  matter  with  our  eyes, 
ten  minutes  ago. '  " — Nicholas  Nickleby, 

II.  Diffuseness. — "  Dickens's  diffuseness  may  arise  in  a 
great  measure  from  his  writing  his  novels  in  periodical  num- 
bers, so  that  he  had  often  to  write  against  time.  .  .  .  He 
becomes  tedious  also  in  depicting  high  life,  as  if  out  of  his 
element.  His  lords  are  merely  stuffed  figures." — 6".  Davey. 

Saintsbury  calls  this  habit  of  diffuseness,  "  the  dreary 
mannerism  which  appears  in  '  Bleak  House,'  which  simply 
floods  '  Little  Dorrit '  and  '  Hard  Times,'  and  which  seldom 
retires  for  long  in  any  of  the  later  books. ' ' 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Tossing  to  and  fro  upon  his  hot,  uneasy  bed  ;  tormented  by 
a  fierce  thirst  which  nothing  could  appease ;  unable  to  find  in 
any  change  of  posture  a  moment's  peace  or  ease,  and  rambling 
ever  through  deserts  of  thought  where  there  was  no  resting- 
place  ;  no  sight  or  sound  suggestive  of  rest  or  repose,  nothing 


DICKENS  647 

but  a  dull,  eternal  weariness,  with  no  change  but  the  restless 
shiftings  of  his  miserable  body  and  the  weary  wandering  of 
his  mind,  constant,  still  to  one  ever-present  anxiety — to  a  sense 
of  something  left  undone,  of  some  fearful  obstacle  to  be  sur- 
mounted, of  some  carking  care  that  would  not  be  driven  away, 
and  which  haunted  the  distempered  brain,  now  in  this  form,  now 
in  that,  always  shadowy  and  dim,  but  recognizable  for  the  same 
phantom  in  every  shape  it  took  ;  darkening  every  vision  like  an 
evil  conscience,  and  making  slumber  horrible." — Old  Curiosity 
Shop. 

"  To  record  of  Mr.  Dombey  that  he  was  not  in  his  way 
affected  by  this  intelligence  would  be  to  do  him  an  injustice.  He 
was  not  a  man  of  whom  it  could  properly  be  said  that  he  was 
ever  startled  or  shocked ;  but  he  certainly  had  a  sense  within 
him  that  if  his  wife  should  sicken  and  decay — he  would  be  very 
sorry,  and  that  he  would  find  a  something  gone  from  among  his 
plate  and  furniture  and  other  household  possessions,  which  was 
well  worth  the  having,  and  could  not  be  lost  without  sincere  re- 
gret. Though  it  would  be  a  cool,  business-like,  gentlemanly, 
self-possessed  regret,  no  doubt." — Dombey  and  Son. 

"  Mr.  Bounderby's  first  disquietude  on  hearing  of  his  happi- 
ness was  occasioned  by  the  necessity  of  imparting  it  to  Mrs. 
Sparsit.  He  could  not  make  up  his  mind  how  to  do  that — or 
what  the  consequences  of  the  act  might  be.  Whether  she 
would  instantly  depart,  bag  and  baggage,  to  Lady  Scadgers, 
or  would  positively  refuse  to  budge  from  the  premises  ;  whether 
she  would  be  plaintive  or  abusive,  tearful  or  tearing  ;  whether  she 
would  break  her  heart  or  break  the  looking-glase.  However,  as  it 
must  be  done,  he  had  no  choice  but  to  do  it;  so,  afte-r  attempt- 
ing several  letters  and  failing  in  them  all,  he  resolved  to  do  it 
by  word  of  mouth." — Hard  Tim&s. 


RUSKIN,  1819— 

Biographical  Outline. — John  Ruskin,  born  in  London, 
February  8,  1819  ;  father  a  wine  merchant  of  Scotch  descent, 
a  man  of  some  literary  and  aesthetic  culture  and,  eventually, 
of  considerable  wealth ;  Ruskin  passes  much  of  his  childhood 
and  youth  at  Herne  Hill,  near  Dulwich,  where  he  writes  his 
earlier  works ;  during  almost  every  summer,  up  to  his  twen- 
tieth year,  he  makes  a  wide  tour  through  various  parts  of 
England  and  Scotland  with  his  parents,  in  their  private  car- 
riage; he  visits  Paris  and  Brussels  in  1825;  at  four  teaches 
himself  to  read  and  write  after  an  original  method,  and  makes 
rhymes  before  he  can  write  them  ;  is  a  book-worm  at  five ; 
between  1826  and  1829  prints  with  a  pen  a  "  work  "  of  three 
volumes,  imitating  the  style  of  Miss  Edgeworth  ;  studies 
Latin  grammar  with  his  mother,  and  becomes  greatly  inter- 
ested in  natural  science ;  writes  numerous  poems  and  dramas 
from  his  seventh  to  his  tenth  year  ;  has  his  first  tutor  (in 
Latin)  in  1829,  and  begins  sketching  in  1831  ;  in  1830  he 
visits  the  Lake  District  and  the  mountains  of  Cumberland, 
and  becomes  a  "mountain-worshipper;"  sees  Southey  and 
Wordsworth  at  church  at  Windermere ;  begins  Greek  in  1830, 
and  is  soon  versifying  Anacreon ;  tries  to  copy  Cruikshank's 
illustrations  of  Grimm's  fairy  tales;  in  1831  has  his  first 
drawing-master,  and  takes  up  French  and  geometry;  writes 
imitations  of  the  Waverley  novels,  "  Childe  Harold,"  "  Don 
Juan,"  and  various  other  works  ;  in  1832  receives  inspiration 
from  Turner's  vignettes  in  Rogers's  "  Italy;  "  during  the  sum- 
mer of  1832  he  posts  leisurely  through  northern  France,  Bel- 
gium, southern  Germany,  and  Italy  to  Como,  Milan,  and 

648 


RUSKIN  649 

Genoa,  and  returns  via  Chamouni  and  Paris,  making  descrip- 
tive verses,  prose  sketches,  and  drawings  of  all  objects  of  in- 
terest (first  sees  the  falls  of  Schaffhausen  on  this  tour) ;  in  1833 
he  enters  the  day  school  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Dale  at  Peck- 
ham,  to  fit  for  Oxford  ;  Ruskin's  father  proposes  to  make  him 
a  clergyman  ;  he  is  greatly  interested  in  mineralogy,  and  at- 
tempts a  "  Dictionary  of  Minerals ;"  publishes  an  essay  on 
mountain  structure  in  Loudon's  Magazine  of  Natural  History 
in  March,  1834;  goes  abroad  in  1835,  determined  to  make 
original  investigations  in  mineralogy,  meteorology,  etc. ;  in- 
vents a  cyanometer,  and  begins  his  annual  journal  of  travel  in 
verse ;  spends  much  of  the  summer  in  the  Bernese  Oberland, 
Venice,  Verona,  and  the  Tyrol ;  during  this  tour  he  sees  on 
the  Rigi  the  storm  scene  so  wonderfully  described  in  "  Modern 
Painters;"  publishes  in  Friendship's  Offering,  December, 
1835,  poems  entitled  "  Andernach,"  "  St.  Goar,"  and  "Salz- 
burg ;  "  early  in  1836  he  falls  passionately  in  love  with  Adele 
Domecq,  a  convent-bred  Catholic,  daughter  of  his  father's 
Paris  partner  (Ruskin  had  been  bred  an  English  churchman 
by  his  very  pious  mother)  ;  writes  for  his  love  a  romance 
entitled  "  Leoni,  a  Legend  of  Italy,"  which  is  published  in 
Friendship' 's  Offering  in  1837  ;  during  1836  he  writes  love 
poems,  a  romantic  novel,  and  a  play,  "  Marcolini,"  of  some 
merit ;  his  love  affair  is  terminated  by  Adele's  marriage,  in 
1839,  to  a  French  nobleman  ;  in  1835  Ruskin  makes  many 
outline  drawings  touched  with  color  in  imitation  of  Front's 
lithographs  ;  he  takes  six  lessons  from  Copley  Fielding,  then 
President  of  the  Water  Color  Society,  and  receives  inspiration 
from  Turner's  pictures  in  the  Exhibition  of  1836;  writes  for 
BlackwootTs  Magazine  a  reply  to  an  adverse  criticism  on 
Turner  that  had  appeared  in  its  pages,  and  submits  the  article 
to  Turner,  who  suppresses  it;  is  matriculated  as  a  "gentle- 
man commoner"  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  late  in  1836, 
and  goes  into  residence  there  in  January,  1837  ;  writes  "  The 
Gipsies"  in  competition  for  the  Newdigate  prize  in  poetry, 


650  RUSKIN 

but  is  defeated  by  Arthur  (afterward  Dean)  Stanley ;  makes 
many  fine  drawings,  mainly  architectural,  and,  during  the 
summer  of  1837,  contributes  to  London's  Architectural  Maga- 
zine an  article  on  "The  Poetry  of  Architecture,"  and  under 
the  pseudonym  "  Kata  Pushin  "  (according  to  nature),  five 
articles  on  "The  Convergence  of  Perpendiculars ;  "  in  1838 
he  writes  "  The  Comparative  Advantages  of  the  Studies  of 
Music  and  Painting,"  and  is  quoted  under  his  pseudonym, 
as  an  authority  on  architecture ;  studies  geology  at  Oxford 
under  Buckland  and  Acland;  competes  for  the  Newdigate 
prize  again  in  1838,  -writing  "The  Exile  of  St.  Helena," 
and  is  again  defeated;  wins  the  Newdigate  in  1839  with  his 
poem  "  Salsette  and  Elephanta;"  in  1840,  on  coming  of 
age,  he  receives  from  his  father  an  allowance  of  ^200  a  year 
for  pocket  money,  and  promptly  spends  it  all  for  one  of 
Turner's  pictures ;  meets  Turner  for  the  first  time  soon  after- 
ward ;  in  the  spring  of  1840  his  health  is  so  affected  by  the 
outcome  of  his  love  affair  that  he  leaves  the  University, 
abandons  his  plans  for  the  church,  and  for  two  years  seeks 
health  in  travel  and  varied  medical  treatment ;  visits  Nor- 
mandy, the  Riviera,  Rome,  Naples,  Venice,  Basle,  and  re- 
turns to  England  in  June,  1841 ;  spends  the  autumn  in  Wales 
and  at  Leamington,  undergoing  medical  treatment ;  at  Leam- 
ington he  meets  his  future  wife,  and,  at  her  challenge,  writes  a 
fairy  tale,  "  The  King  of  the  Golden  River,"  which  was  pub- 
lished in  1843 ;  takes  up  his  university  work  again  in  November, 
1841,  under  his  tutor  Gordon  ;  is  deficient  in  Latin  and  Greek, 
but  excels  in  French,  biblical  knowledge,  and  mineralogy; 
passes  his  final  examination  and  receives  A.B.  from  Oxford  in 
May,  1842  ;  continues  drawing  lessons  under  J.  D.  Harding, 
and,  on  his  return  to  England  in  June,  1842,  determines  on  art 
criticism  as  his  life  work  ;  writes  and  publishes  the  first  vol- 
ume of  "  Modern  Painters  '  during  the  winter  of  1842-43  ; 
in  August,  1843,  removes  with  his  parents  from  Herne  Hill 
to  Denmark  Hill,  nearer  the  centre  of  London,  and  becomes 


RUSKIN  651 

a  social  "  lion  ;  "  takes  M.A.  from  Oxford  in  October  ;  tours 
through  Switzerland  again  in  1844,  stopping  to  study  the  old 
masters  at  Paris;  in  1845  makes  his  first  Continental  tour 
alone,  stopping  to  study  Christian  art  at  Lucca,  Verona,  and 
Venice  ;  is  tortured  with  doubts  concerning  religious  truth  ; 
writes  and  publishes  "  Modern  Painters,"  Volume  II.,  during 
the  winter  of  1845-46 ;  makes  another  tour  through  Switzerland 
and  Italy  in  1846  ;  to  Ambleside  for  rest  in  1847,  suffering 
still  from  pectoral  weakness  and  from  a  spinal  weakness  which, 
eventually,  causes  a  slight  deformity  ;  from  Ambleside  to 
Leamington  for  treatment  and  thence  to  Perth,  where  he 
becomes  engaged  to  Miss  Charlotte  Withers,  the  "  fair  maid 
of  Perth,"  whom  he  had  met  in  1838;  is  married  to  Miss 
Withers  at  Perth  April  10,  1848  ;  makes  a  tour  of  Normandy 
with  his  wife  in  the  summer  of  1848,  returning  to  London  in 
October,  and  settling  at  31  Park  Street,  where  Ruskin  writes 
"The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture"  during  the  winter  of 
1848-49,  himself  making  the  plates  for  illustrating  the  book 
in  soft-ground  etching ;  he  makes  another  Continental  tour 
in  1849  ;  settles  in  Venice  to  study  architecture,  and  re- 
turns in  February,  1850,  to  London,  where  he  writes  "  The 
Stones  of  Venice,"  illustrating  the  book  with  engravings  in 
mezzotint  and  line  made  by  his  own  hand;  in  1850  Rus- 
kin's  father  collects  and  publishes  his  son's  poems;  during 
1851  are  published  "  The  King  of  the  Golden  River,"  Vol- 
ume I.  of  "  The  Stones  of  Venice,"  and  the  theological  pam- 
phlet "  Notes  on  the  Construction  of  Sheepfolds."  "  The 
Stones"  is  severely  criticised  by  "the  Philistines,"  but  is 
highly  praised  by  Carlyle  in  a  personal  letter,  which  begins  a 
voluminous  correspondence  between  Ruskin  and  his  "mas- 
ter," continued  during  Carlyle's  life;  during  1851  Ruskin 
also  revises  Volumes  I.  and  II.  of  "  Modern  Painters,"  and 
publishes  "  Pre-Raphaelitism  ;  "  from  August,  1851,  to  June, 
1852,  he  is  at  Venice  studying  architecture;  he  returns  in 
July,  1852,  to  Herne  Hill,  where  he  writes  Volumes  II.  and 


652  RUSKIN 

III.  of  "  The  Stones  of  Venice,"  published  in  1853  ;  he  lect- 
ures at  Edinburgh  on  Architecture  and  Painting  during  the 
summer  of  1853  (lectures  published  in  1854)  ;  makes  another 
Swiss  tour  in  1854,  returning  to  London  and  helping  to 
found  the  Working  Men's  College  in  October  ;  with  D.  G. 
Rossetti,  Ruskin  teaches  classes  in  painting,  weekly,  at  the 
college — a  service  that  he  performs  faithfully  for  many  ensu- 
ing winters;  in  the  autumn  of  1854  his  wife,  whose  tastes 
had  proved  totally  incompatible  with  his  own,  leaves  him 
permanently — the  entire  facts  relating  to  the  separation  have 
never  been  published  ;  during  1855  Ruskin  meets  the  Brown- 
ings (who  become  warm  friends  and  regular  correspondents), 
studies  shipping  at  Deal,  and  writes  and  publishes  Volumes 
III.  and  IV.  of  "  Modern  Painters;  "  makes  another  Swiss 
tour  with  his  parents  in  1856,  returning  to  London  in  the 
winter,  where  he  writes  and  publishes  "  The  Elements  of 
Drawing,"  long  used  as  a  text-book;  during  1857  he  lectures 
frequently  in  London  on  art-topics  and  at  Manchester  in  July 
on  "  The  Political  Economy  of  Art;  "  makes  another  tour  of 
Scotland  in  1857,  and  spends  the  winter  of  1857-58  at  the 
National  Gallery  arranging  and  restoring  Turner's  sketches, 
which  had  been  left  to  mildew  and  destruction;  he  rescues 
and  mounts  between  glass  some  four  hundred  out  of  19,000  ; 
during  1858  he  gives  several  lectures  and  makes  another 
Swiss  tour ;  during  1859  visits,  with  his  parents,  Berlin, 
Dresden,  Nuremberg,  Munich,  etc.,  and  returns  to  London 
to  write  Volume  V.  of  "  Modern  Painters"  in  the  winter; 
about  this  time  art  becomes  subordinated,  in  Ruskin's  mind, 
to  ethical  considerations;  during  the  summer  of  1860  he  forms 
friendships  with  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  Mrs.  Stowe,  and  Walt 
Whitman,  all  of  whom  he  meets  at  Genoa  ;  he  gradually  re- 
jects "orthodox  religion,  orthodox  morals  and  politics,  ortho- 
dox art,  and  orthodox  science  ;  "  writes  "  Unto  This  Last" 
while  at  Chamouni,  in  the  summer  of  1860  ;  spends  the  fol- 
lowing winter  at  Denmark  Hill ;  continues  lecturing  in  1861, 


RUSKIN  653 

and  in  the  autumn  visits  Savoy,  where  he  writes  " Munera 
Pulveris"  which  is  published  at  first  serially,  and  appears  in 
book  form  in  1872  ;  he  spends  the  summer  of  1862  in  Switz- 
erland ;  returns  to  lecture  at  the  Working  Men's  College  in 
December,  and  goes  back  to  Mornex,  Switzerland,  till  June, 
1863,  where  he  studies  the  geology  of  the  Alps;  lectures  at 
London  on  "Stratified  Alps"  in  June,  and  becomes  more 
intimate  with  Carlyle  ;  during  1864  he  lectures  at  London, 
Bradford,  and  Manchester  on  economic  subjects,  and  dis- 
continues his  teaching  at  the  Working  Men's  College  ;  his 
father  dies  in  March,  1864,  leaving  Ruskin  a  legacy  of 
^120,000  ;  his  cousin,  Miss  Agnew  (afterward  Mrs.  Severn), 
becomes  a  member  of  Ruskin's  family  in  April,  1864,  and  is 
thenceforward  the  guardian  of  his  health  and  comfort ;  in  1864 
he  publishes  ' '  Queen's  Gardens ' '  obscurely  as  a  pamphlet ;  he 
is  in  England  during  1865  lecturing  and  publishing  "Ses- 
ame and  Lilies,"  which  passed  through  fourteen  editions  up 
to  1892  ;  he  also  studies  educational  methods,  and  devises 
the  system  portrayed  in  his  "  Ethics  of  the  Dust,"  pub- 
lished in  1866  (Carlyle  calls  it  "  a  most  shining  perform- 
ance")  ;  the  "  Ethics  "  was  unpopular  at  first,  but  was  repub- 
lished  in  1877,  and  eight  thousand  copies  were  soon  sold  ; 
Ruskin  spends  the  summer  of  1866  in  Switzerland,  starting 
with  the  Trevelyans  as  companions ;  he  is  at  home  during 
1867,  lecturing  and  publishing  "  Time  and  Tide  ;  "  receives 
LL.D.  from  Oxford  in  May  ;  spends  most  of  1868  in  mineral 
researches,  lecturing  at  Dublin  and  at  London  and  making  a 
tour  through  Belgium;  in  1869  he  lectures,  travels  through 
Switzerland  and  Italy  again,  is  elected  Slade  Professor  of  Fine 
Art  at  Oxford  in  August,  and  publishes  "  The  Queen  of  the 
Air;  "  he  delivers  his  first  course  of  Oxford  lectures  in  Febru- 
ary, 1870  ;  then  to  Italy  and  back  to  Oxford  for  his  second 
course  in  December  ;  during  1871  he  publishes  "Fors  Clavi- 
gera"  No.  I,  gives  his  third  course  at  Oxford,  is  severely  ill, 
and,  after  partial  recovery,  buys  his  present  [1897]  home, 


654  RUSKIN 

Brantwood,  in  the  Lake  District ;  he  endows  a  mastership  in 
drawing  at  Oxford  with  ^5,000,  and  gives  ^7,000  to  the 
St.  George's  Society,  which  he  had  then  recently  helped  to 
found  ;  he  is  elected  Lord  Rector  of  St.  Andrew's  University, 
but  is  disqualified  from  serving  because  of  his  relations  to 
Oxford  ;  his  mother  dies  in  1871,  aged  ninety  ;  during  1872 
Ruskin  delivers  his  fourth  and  fifth  courses  at  Oxford,  making 
his  customary  Italian  tour  between  the  two,  and  takes  up  his 
residence  at  Brantwood  ;  during  this  year  he  becomes  deeply 
interested  in  the  problem  of  better  housing  for  the  poor  and 
in  the  matter  of  street-cleaning;  publishes  "The  Eagle's 
Nest,"  and  withdraws  most  of  his  early  books  from  circulation 
for  the  time;  during  1873  ne  ^s  re-elected  Slade  Professor, 
gives  several  general  lectures  and  his  sixth  course  at  Oxford, 
and  publishes  "Ariadne  Florentina ;  "  from  1872  to  1875 
he  becomes  devotedly  attached  to  a  former  lady  pupil,  and 
proposes  marriage,  but  is  refused  because  he  *vill  not  declare 
that  he  loves  God  more  than  her;  she  dies  broken-hearted 
soon  afterward;  during  1874  he  travels  through  Italy  and 
Sicily,  is  severely  ill  at  Assisi,  and  returns  to  deliver  his 
seventh  and  eighth  courses  at  Oxford,  where  he  has  Prince 
Leopold  as  an  interested  pupil;  during  1875  he  makes  a  car- 
riage tour  of  northern  England,  establishes  a  museum  at  Shef- 
field, and  gives  his  ninth  course  at  Oxford,  having  as  a  pupil 
W.  H.  Mallock,  whom  Ruskin  pronounces  to  be  the  only  man 
who  ever  really  understood  him  ;  during  1876  he  is  re-elected 
Slade  Professor,  and,  after  several  general  lectures,  goes  to 
Paris  and  then  to  Venice,  where  he  remains  till  June,  1877  ; 
he  experiences  a  reawakening  of  his  old  religious  feelings, 
and  retracts  his  sceptical  judgments ;  forms  the  Guild  of  St. 
George,  a  semi-socialistic  society,  from  1873  to  1877  ;  gives 
his  tenth  course  at  Oxford  in  1877  ;  publishes  "  Fors  Clavi- 
gera"  in  ninety-six  parts  from  1871  to  1884 — afterward  col- 
lected and  published  in  eight  volumes;  publishes  "Pro- 
serpina "  in  ten  parts  from  1875  to  188-6,  and  "  Deucalion  " 


RUSKIN  655 

in  eight  parts  from  1875  to  1883  ;  during  1877  he  visits 
Prince  Leopold  at  Windsor  and  also  Gladstone,  whom  Ruskin 
had  misunderstood  and  attacked ;  he  becomes  reconciled  with 
Gladstone,  and  promptly  publishes  an  admission  of  his  error 
in  the  current  number  of  Fors  ;  he  is  severely  ill  with  in- 
flammation of  the  brain  at  Brantwood  in  March,  1878  ;  later 
he  publishes  in  Fors  a  criticism  on  the  artist  Whistler, 
who  sues  Ruskin  for  libel,  wins,  and  gets  one  farthing  dam- 
ages;  Ruskin 's  costs  are  paid  by  voluntary  public  subscrip- 
tion ;  early  in  1879  he  resigns  the  Slade  Professorship,  and 
has  a  bitter  contest  with  Tyndall  over  the  theory  of  glacial 
action  ;  he  is  at  Brantwood  in  feeble  health  during  most  of 
1879,  1880,  and  1881,  where  he  is  cared  for  by  his  cousin, 
Mrs.  Severn  ;  during  1880  he  visits  France,  lectures  at  Eton, 
and  publishes  "The  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Church;  "  in 
1882  he  removes  with  the  Severns  to  Herne  Hill,  revisits 
France  and  Italy,  and  goes  back  to  Brantwood  early  in  1883  ; 
he  resumes  lecturing  at  Oxford  ;  is  at  Herne  Hill  during 
1885,  where  he  forms  and  lectures  to  the  "  Society  of  the 
Friends  of  Living  Creatures;  "  publishes,  in  1885,  a  reprint 
of  all  his  magazine  articles  under  the  title  "  The  Old  Road," 
and  begins  his  autobiography,  "  Praterita"  of  which  twenty- 
four  of  the  twenty-eight  parts  have  since  been  published  in  two 
volumes ;  he  is  severely  ill  again  at  Brantwood  in  1886,  and 
when  not  entirely  recovered  mails  his  famous  letter  to  the 
Richmond  rector;  visits  southern  England  again  in  1887  and 
the  Continent  in  1888;  in  the  summer  of  1889  he  attempts 
to  continue  "  Prceterita  "  at  Seascale,  on  the  Cumberland 
Coast,  but  is  compelled  by  the  failure  of  his  powers  to 
give  up  the  task  ;  devotes  his  remaining  strength  to  writing 
"Joanna's  Care,"  a  tribute  to  his  cousin,  Mrs.  Severn;  he 
refuses  to  attempt  any  further  literary  effort  after  1890,  and 
has  since  lived  quietly  at  Brantwood.  From  his  fifteenth  to 
his  sixty-ninth  year  Ruskin  published  at  least  seventy-two 
volumes  and  one  hundred  magazine  articles,  made  several 


656  RUSKIN 

hundred  drawings  and  engravings,  delivered  scores,  perhaps 
hundreds,  of  lectures,  and  made  at  least  nineteen  Continental 
tours,  besides  travelling  much  about  Great  Britain. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON    RUSKIN'S   STYLE. 

McCarthy,   J.,    "  Modern   Leaders."     New  York,  1872,  Sheldon,  183- 

191. 
Mather,  J.  M.,  "  The  Life  and  Teachings  of  Ruskin. "     New  York,  1890, 

Warne. 
Waldstein,  C.,   "The  Work  of  Ruskin.'"     New  York,   1893,   Harper, 

1-200. 
Lancaster,  H.  H.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."     Edinburgh,  1876,  Edmon- 

ston  &  Douglass,  297-351. 
Cooke,  G.  W.,    "Poets  and   Problems."     Boston,  1886,   Ticknor,  175- 

267. 
Bayne,  P.,  "Essays  in  Biography  and  Criticism."     Boston,  1857,  Gould 

&  Lincoln,  I :  281-324. 
Saintsbury,  G.,  "  Corrected  Impressions. "   New  York,  1895,  Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  198-218. 
Oliphant,    Mrs.,    "The  Victorian  Age  of    English    Literature."     New 

York,  1892,  Tail,  501-529. 
Bayne,  P.,  "Lessons  from  my  Masters."     New  York,  1879,   Harper, 

367-449. 

Cook,  E.  T.,  "Studies  in  Ruskin."  London,  1890,  G.  Allen,  v.  index. 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  "Modern  Humanists."  London,  1891,  Swan,  Son- 

nenschein  &  Co.,  184-212. 

Godwin,  P.,  "Out  of  the  Past."     New  York,  1870,  Putnam,  367-394. 
Shepard,  W.  S.,"  Pen  Pictures  of  Modern  Authors."     New  York,  1886, 

Putnam,  56-68. 
Collingwood,  W.   G.,    "The  Art  Teaching  of  Ruskin."     New  York, 

1891,  Putnam. 
Friswell,  J.  H.,  "Modern  Men  of  Letters."     London,  1870,  Hodder  & 

Stoughton,  91-119. 
Ritchie,  A.  T.,  "  Records  of  John  Ruskin."    New  York,  1892,  Harper, 

63-125- 
Nicoll,  H.  J.,  "  Landmarks  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1883, 

Appleton,  432-436. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Deyelopment  of  English    Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  2 :  488-505. 
Mitford,  M.  R. ,  "  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."     New  York,  1851, 

Harper,  547,  etc. 


RUSKIN  657 

Henley,  W.  E.,  "Views  and  Reviews."     New  York,  1890,  Scribner,  16. 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893, 

Harper,  2  :  419-420. 
Cook,  D. ,  "Art  of  England."     London,  1869,  Sampson,  Lowe  &  Co., 

3I6-359- 
Hutton,    R.    H.,    "Criticisms  on   Contemporary    Thought."     London, 

1894,  Macmillan,    2  :    106-120. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  42:  39-51  (H.  E.  Scudder). 
Nineteenth  Century,  3:    136-145;   4:   925-931. 
North  American  Review,  66:    110-145  (F.  Dexter);   72:   294-316(8.  G. 

Brown);    102  :   306-312  (R.  Sturgis). 
The  .\ 'ation,  33:   220-221  (A.  G.  Sedgwick);  12:   221  (W.  J.  Stillman) ; 

29:  411-412  (R.  Sturgis);  46:   263-264;   54:    16-17  (W.   J-   Still- 
man)  ;   57  :    159-160  (W.  J.  Stillman). 
Edinburgh  Review,    103:   273-284;    167:    198-234. 
Foreign  Quarterly  Review,  37 :  380-416. 
Quarterly  Review,  98 :   384-433. 
New  Englander,  29:  659-677  (H.  M.  Day). 

British   Quarterly  Rei'iew,  32:  412-439;    13:  476-496;    18:  460-483. 
Methodist  Quarterly  Review,   20:   533-544  (G.  Haven);  49:   697-710 

(W.  N.  McElroy). 

The  Chicago  Dial,  i  :   228-229  (W.  F.  Allen). 
Lutheran  Quarterly,  10:    1-23  (C.  A.  Stork). 
Eclectic  Magazine,  31  :  65-78  (Hogg). 
Christian  Observer,  62 :  658-678. 
Appleton's  Journal,  20:   58-65  (T.  M.  Coan). 
Century  Magazine,  13  :  357-366  (W.  J.  Stillman). 
Harper's  Magazine,  18:  382-418  (Chas.  Waldstein). 
Blackwood^s  Magazine,  75  :   740-756 ;   70 :  326-348. 
Macmillan 's  Magazine,  22  :   423-434  (S.  Brooke). 
Eclectic  Review,  112:  478-488;    103:   545-563. 
Prospective  Review,  10  :    19-51. 
The  American,  51:   265-266  (E.  McCall). 
Unitarian  Review,  23  :   241-257  (D.  M.  Wilson). 
North  British  Review,  36 :    1-20  (H.  H.  Lancaster). 
Tinsley's  Magazine,  43  :  686-691  (Julia  Firth). 
Once  a  Week,  26  :  475-479. 
The  Galaxy,  13:    164-172  (J.  McCarthy). 
The  Critic,  19  :   286-287  (Daily  News). 
The  Practical  Magazine,  7:    161-165  (W.  S.  C). 
Good  Words,  35:  538-540  (Mrs.   E.  T.  Cook);  34:  477-481   (Mrs.  E 

T.  Cook). 
42 


658  RUSKIN 

The  Art  Journal,  45  :   336. 

Poet  Lore,  5  :    1-7  (W.  G.  Kingsland). 

Fraser's    Magazine,    9:     688-701     (L.     Stephen);    89:    688-701    (L. 

Stephen) ;  49 :   127-138. 
National  Review,  5  :   403-412  (E.  S.  P). 

Temple  Bar,  83  :   49-55. 

Scottish  Review,  24:   21-44  (Kaufmann). 

Spectator,  50:  435-436;   50:  467-468  and  1174-1175. 

PARTICULAR   CHARACTERISTICS. 

I:  Descriptive  Power. — "  There  are  many  to  whom  the 
heavens  declared  no  glory  and  the  earth  unfolded  no  form 
until  Ruskin's  writings  opened  their  eyes  to  see  and  their 
hearts  to  feel ;  many  who  never  saw  the  beauty  of  cloud  form, 
nor  knew  the  majesty  of  the  hills,  nor  felt  the  sweetness  of  the 
meadows  until  taught  by  him  in  '  Modern  Painters.'  Here 
lies  much  of  his  power :  he  can  bring  back  to  us  the  wonder 
of  childhood;  he  is,  in  this  sense,  the  restorer  of  paradise." 
— /.  M.  Mather. 

"  With  equal  truth  he  gives  us  the  clouds  sweeping  in 
stormy  grandeur ;  calmly  floating  like  angels'  wings  in  the  far 
distance  of  the  higher  heaven ;  clustering  in  gorgeous  pomp 
around  the  sunset ;  lying  dark  against  the  fading  orange  of 
the  evening  sky.  And  in  all  this  there  is  a  quietness  and 
freedom  from  exaggeration  which  does  not  always  pervade 
Mr.  Ruskin's  writings." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

"  Listen  to  Ruskin's  description  of  the  sea,  and  you  think 
he  must  have  spent  his  days  and  years  in  watching  the  beauty 
of  its  garlanded  summer  waves  and  the  tortured  writhing  of 
its  wintry  billows.  Follow  his  eye  as  it  ranges  over  the  broad 
fields  of  the  sky,  and  you  are  impressed  with  the  idea  that  it 
could  never  have  been  turned  from  observing  the  processions 
of  the  clouds  across  the  blue  or  tracing  the  faint  streaks  of 
the  cirri,  lying  like  soft  maiden's  hair  along  heaven's  azure, 
or  watching  the  sun  as  he  touches  the  whole  sky  with  gold  and 
scarlet  and  vermilion,  to  be  for  him  a  regal  tent  at  eventide. 


RUSKIN  659 

Go  with  him  into  the  forest,  and  you  believe  that  he  has 
studied  nothing  else  but  the  forms  of  stem  and  branch,  the 
arrangement  of  light  and  shade  in  the  hollows  of  the  foliage. 
Enter  with  him  the  cathedral  of  the  mountains,  mark  atten- 
tively as  he  points  out  '  their  gates  of  rock,  pavements  of 
cloud,  choirs  of  stream  and  stone,  altars  of  snow,  and  vaults 
of  purple  traversed  by  the  continual  stars,'  and  you  conclude 
that  there  he  must  always  have  worshipped.  .  .  .  What- 
ever he  may  call  himself,  it  is  as  a  painter  of  nature  with  words 
that  Ruskin  is  named  with  enthusiasm  wherever  men  speak  the 
English  tongue.  It  has  been  through  his  books,  not  through 
his  pictures,  that  he  has  mainly  influenced  his  generation. 
.  You  are  apt,  when  you  read  his  account  of  one 
series  of  natural  appearances,  to  conclude  that  he  must  have 
devoted  all  his  time  and  all  his  attention  to  that  particular 
scries.  To  show  the  flickering  dance  of  sunbeams  on  forest 
leaves,  to  set  before  us  the  very  spring  and  prancing  of  the 
waves,  to  word-paint  the  wreathing  of  the  mist  and  every 
caprice  and  humor  of  the  sky,  required  rather  an  abundant 
supply  of  words  ;  but  the  supply  at  Ruskin's  command  was  a 
small  matter  to  his  power  of  laying  them  on,  to  the  exquisite 
precision  with  which  he  applied  every  vocable.  .  .  .  We 
do  not,  for  our  part,  recall  a  single  instance  in  which  he  has 
deliberately  set  himself  to  place  a  scene  before  our  eyes,  with- 
out enabling  us,  after  a  sufficiently  close  and  steady  look,  to 
see  it  in  its  grand,  consistent  features.  ...  In  the  ele- 
ments of  descriptive  power,  which  underlie  the  garb,  either  of 
prose  or  verse,  we  have  no  hesitation  in  declaring  that,  with 
the  exception  of  one  or  two  of  Byron's  highest  efforts,  such  as 
his  description  of  the  storm  in  the  Alps,  the  boasted  and  mag- 
nificent descriptions  of  that  poet  are  decidedly  inferior  to  those 
of  Ruskin.  Such  a  series  of  descriptions,  indeed,  as  Ruskin's 
does  not,  in  prose  or  verse,  exist  in  the  English  language,  or, 
we  are  assured,  in  any  other." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  I  feel  confident  that  whoever  has  read  the  works  of  Rus- 


660  RUSKIN 

kin  will  thereafter  approach  nature  with  a  new  faculty  of  ap- 
preciation, will  have  his  attention  directed  to  what  he  before 
passed  by  with  indifference,  and  will  discover  what  before  was 
hidden.  .  .  .  And  this  will  not  be  only  with  regard  to  the 
beauties  of  the  Alps  or  the  stormy  sea,  but  they  will  be  able 
to  extract  elevating  pleasure  out  of  each  flower  that  blooms 
before  their  window  in  the  summer,  and  even  out  of  the  deli- 
cate tracery-work  of  the  bare  branches  of  the  trees,  deadened 
by  the  cold  winter,  that  stands  at  the  back  of  their  house  or 
in  the  city  square.  .  .  .  Ruskin,  in  his  best  description 
of  nature,  does  also  use  movement  as  the  central  energy  of  his 
descriptive  motive.  Clouds  are  not  merely  square  or  round 
or  multiform,  but  they  move,  swing,  sweep,  or  hang  to  or  in 
their  various  shapes;  their  colors  are  growing  or  fading  in 
their  intensity  or  asserting  some  relation  to  one  another ;  nay, 
even  the  shape  of  each  rock  and  stone  and  leaf  and  twig  is 
described  in  the  varied  motion  of  its  lines.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  astonishing  and  admirable  qualities  of  his  best  passages 
that,  with  all  their  alliteration  and  the  harmony  of  sound 
which  pervades  his  ordered  array,  the  description  is  most  mi- 
nute and  accurate;  and  no  better  words,  no  words  encir- 
cling and  penetrating  the  meanings  of  things  more  fully  and 
promptly,  could  have  been  chosen." — Charles  Waldstcin. 

"  'The  Stones  of  Venice  '  is  the  book  of  descriptive  prose 
in  English,  and  all  others  toil  after  it  in  vain." — Saintsbury. 

"  Many  passages  from  the  '  Modern  Painters  '  and  those 
books  that  immediately  followed  it,  such  as  that  of  the  writer's 
first  view  of  Venice,  are  quoted  as  one  should  frame  a  picture 
rather  than  as  mere  descriptions  in  words  are  usually  treated. 
These  delectable  passages  are  indeed  pictures  as  noble  as  any  in 
Turner,  and  are  constantly  removed  from  the  original  page  to 
be  hung,  as  it  were,  in  the  picture-galleries  of  the  imagination, 
where  they  shine  with  a  perfection  of  color  and  tone  which  is 
often  denied  to  the  finest  pigments.  .  .  .  Notwithstand- 
ing all  the  eccentric  accompaniments  of  his  genius,  nothing 


RUSKIN  66 1 

can  touch  Ruskin's  high  place  in  literature  as  one  of  the  most 
perfect  masters  of  style  and  language  which  this  century,  or 
indeed  any  other,  has  known." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  What  is  clear  is  that  his  faculty  mainly  reposes  on  an  ex- 
traordinary power  of  observation.  .  .  .  If  we  carefully 
consider  his  work  from  first  to  last,  we  shall  see  that  he  is, 
above  all  things,  a  perceiver,  a  seer  in  the  strict  sense ;  one 
who  in  art  detects  intentions  and  significances  where  other 
eyes  miss  them." — -J.  M.  Robertson. 

"  He  says  he  never  knew  a  child  more  incapable  than  him- 
self of  telling  a  tale,  but  when  he  chooses  to  describe  a  man  or 
a  woman,  there  stands  the  figure  before  us ;  when  he  tells  a 
story  we  live  it.  His  is  rather  the  descriptive  than  the  con- 
structive faculty  ;  his  mastery  is  over  detail  and  quality  rather 
than  form." — Anne  Thackeray  Ritchie. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  How  different  must  the  thoughts  about  nature  have  been,  of 
the  noble  who  lived  among  the  bright  marble  porticoes  of  the 
Greek  groups  of  temple  or  palace, — in  the  midst  of  a  plain  cov- 
ered with  corn  and  olives,  and  by  the  shore  of  a  sparkling  and 
freighted  sea, — from  those  of  the  master  of  some  mountain  prom- 
ontory in  the  green  recesses  of  Northern  Europe,  watching  night 
by  night,  from  amongst  his  heaps  of  storm-broken  stone,  rounded 
into  towers,  the  lightnings  of  the  lonely  sea  flash  round  the  sands 
of  Harlech  or  the  mists  changing  their  shapes  forever  among 
the  changeless  pines  that  fringe  the  crests  of  Jura." — Modern 
Painters. 

"  Cressed  brook  and  ever  eddying  river,  lifted  even  in  flood 
scarcely  over  its  stepping-stones,  but  through  all  sweet  summer 
keeping  tremulous  music  with  harp-strings  of  dark  water  among 
the  silver  fingering  of  the  pebbles.  .  .  .  With  quiet  depth  of 
clear  water  furrowing  among  the  grass  blades  and  looking  only 
like  their  shadow,  but  presently  emerging  again  in  little  startled 
gushes  and  laughing  hurries,  as  if  they  had  remembered  suddenly 
that  the  day  was  too  short  for  them  to  get  down  the  hill." — Mod- 
ern Painters. 


662  RUSKIN 

"  Go  out,  in  the  spring  time,  among  the  meadows  that  slope 
from  the  shores  of  the  Swiss  lakes.  There,  mingled  with  the 
taller  gentians  and  the  white  narcissus,  the  grass  grows  deep  and 
free  ;  and  as  you  follow  the  winding  mountain  paths,  beneath 
arching  boughs  all  veiled  and  dim  with  blossoms,  paths  that  for- 
ever droop  and  rise  over  the  green  banks  and  mounds  sweeping 
down  in  scented  undulation,  steep  to  the  blue  water,  studded  here 
and  there  with  new-mown  heaps,  look  up  towards  the  higher  hills, 
where  the  waves  of  everlasting  green  roll  silently  into  their  long 
inlets  among  the  shadows  of  the  pines." — Modern  Painters. 

2.  Magnificence — Splendor    of   Diction. — "  In  his 

early  days  of  enthusiasm  he  was  often  magnificent — no  lesser 
word  will  suffice.  .  .  .  For  more  than  forty  years  artists 
in  flamboyant  prose  have  been  writing  after  and  after  the 
famous  description  of  the  falls  of  Schaffhausen.  ...  I 
have  never  been  a  Ruskinite,  though  I  have  always  thought 
that  nobody  in  our  time  has  touched  Ruskin  at  his  very  best 
as  an  artist  in  the  flamboyant  variety  of  English  prose.  .  .  . 
If  these  curious  volumes  are  taken  with  a  due  amount  of 
rational  salt,  they  cannot  fail  to  enlarge  and  exercise  the  tastes 
and  powers  of  the  reader.  .  .  .  They  will  be  found  to 
contain  the  very  finest  prose  (without  exception  and  beyond 
comparison)  which  has  been  written  in  English  during  the 
last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  great  merit  of  his 
prose  is  that  it  is  never,  as  most  of  the  ornate  prose  styles  of 
a  more  recent  day  are,  affected  and  unnatural.  .  .  .  Mr. 
Ruskin's  purple  patches — despite  a  rather  too  great  tendency 
to  run  not  merely  into  definitely  rhythmical,  but  into  defi- 
nitely metrical  forms — are  never  labored ;  they  never  suggest 
effort,  strain,  or  trick." — Saintsbury. 

"  At  his  bidding  we  awake  to  a  new  consciousness  of  the 
beauty  and  grandeur  of  the  world.  .  .  .  Summer  has  for 
us  a  new  opulence  and  pride  ;  autumn,  which  is  summer  meet- 
ing death  with  a  smile,  a  new  solemnity  and  a  more  noble 
sadness.  Even  to  winter  we  learn  to  look  for  his  part  in 


RUSKIX  663 

nature's  pageantry,  in  nature's  orchestral  beauty  ;  we  find  new 
music  in  his  storms,  a  new  majesty  in  his  cataracts,  a  more 
exquisite  pencilling  in  his  frost-work." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  His  style  is  stately  in  form,  the  diction  is  rich  with  beauty 
and  magnificence,  and  the  purpose  is  always  lofty  and  pure. 
He  writes  as  one  who  gives  his  whole  heart  to  what  he  says, 
who  pours  his  words  forth  in  a  flood,  with  majestic  intensity 
and  the  splendor  of  power.  He  has  the  gift  of  graceful  utter- 
ance, so  that  every  sentence  is  rounded  and  complete,  happy 
in  form  and  instinct  with  charm." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  Of  this  first  volume  [of  '  Modern  Painters']  what  most  im- 
pressed the  public  was  not  the  soundness  of  his  views  of  art 
or  his  knowledge  of  nature     .     .     .     but  his  elo- 
quence, his  magnificent  diction." — W.  J.  Stillman. 

"  Many  passages  of  'Modern  Painters'  are  really  poems  in 
their  tenderness,  their  sentiment,  and  their  grandeur." — Mary 
Russell  Mitford. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  And  then  wait  yet  for  one  hour,  while  the  east  again  becomes 
purple,  and  the  heaving  mountains,  rolling  against  it  in  darkness 
like  waves  of  a  wild  sea,  are  drowned  one  by  one  in  the  glory  of 
its  burning  ;  watch  the  white  glaciers  blaze  in  their  winding  paths 
about  the  mountains,  like  mighty  serpents  with  scales  of  fire  ; 
watch  the  columnar  peaks  of  solitary  snow,  kindling  downward, 
chasm  by  chasm,  each  in  itself  a  new  morning  ;  their  long  ava- 
lanches cast  down  in  keen  streams  brighter  than  the  lightning, 
sending  each  her  tribute  of  driven  snow,  like  altar-smoke  up  to 
the  heavens  ;  the  rose-light  of  their  silent  domes  flushing  that 
heaven  about  them  and  above  them,  piercing  with  purer  light 
through  its  purple  lines  of  lifted  cloud,  casting  a  new  glory 
on  every  wreath  as  it  passes  by,  until  the  whole  heaven,  one 
scarlet  canopy,  is  interwoven  with  a  roof  of  waving  flame  and 
tossing,  vault  beyond  vault,  as  with  the  drifted  winds  of  many 
companies  of  angels  ;  and  then,  when  you  can  look  no  more  for 
gladness,  and  when  you  are  bowed  down  with  fear  and  love  for 
the  Maker  and  Doer  of  this,  tell  me  who  has  delivered  his  mes- 
sage unto  men." — Modern  Painters. 


664  RUSKIN 

"  The  fields  !  All  spring  and  summer  is  in  them,  the  walks 
by  silent  scented  paths,  the  rests  in  noonday  heat,  the  joy  of 
herds  and  flocks,  the  power  of  all  shepherd  life  and  meditation, 
the  life  of  sun-light  upon  the  world,  falling  in  emerald  streaks 
and  falling  in  soft  blue  shadows,  where  else  it  would  have  struck 
upon  the  dark  mould  or  scorching  dust, — pastures  beside  the 
pacing  brooks,  soft  banks  and  knolls  of  lowly  hills,  crispy  leaves 
all  dim  with  early  dew,  or  smooth  in  evening  warmth  of  barred 
sunshine,  dinted  by  happy  feet,  and  softening  in  their  full  the 
sound  of  loving  voices ;  all  these  are  ^summed  in  those  simple 
words." — Modern  Painters. 

"  It  had  been  wild  weather  when  I  left  Rome,  and  all  across 
the  Campagna  the  clouds  were  sweeping  in  sulphurous  blue, 
with  a  clap  of  thunder  or  two,  and  breaking  gleams  of  sun  along 
the  Claudian  aqueduct,  lighting  up  the  infinity  of  its  arches  like 
the  bridge  of  chaos.  But  as  I  climbed  the  long  slope  of  the 
Alban  mount,  the  storm  swept  finally  to  the  north,  and  the  noble 
outlines  of  the  dome  of  Albano  and  graceful  darkness  of  its  ilex 
groves  rose  against  pure  streaks  of  alternate  blue  and  amber  ; 
the  upper  sky  gradually  flashing  through  the  last  fragments  of 
rain-cloud  in  deep  palpitating  azure,  half  ether  and  half-dew." 
— Modern  Painters. 

3.  Impetuous  Eloquence. — "  [He  is]  one  of  the  most 
eloquent  prose  writers  of  any  age  or  literature,  a  man  whose 
feeling  for  art  is  not  a  taste  but  a  kind  of  passion. 
He  has  written  with  a  fire  and  an  earnestness  that  were  quite 
new  in  critical  literature.  .  .  .  He  has  an  almost  unpar- 
alleled command  of  language,  and  in  that  he  has  carried  both 
art  and  energy  to  unsurpassed  lengths.  .  .  .  It  [ '  Mod- 
ern Painters'  ]  is  certainly,  for  eloquence  and  energy,  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  books  ever  produced  by  a  youth  in  his 
twenties.  .  .  .  -His  prose,  which  from  the  first  had  a 
boundless  wealth  of  power  and  color,  has  in  later  years  grown 
more  and  more  direct  and  electric  without  losing  any  of  its 
eloquence,  seeming  to  be  burned  ever  purer  in  the  fire  of  his 
passion.  .  .  .  The  worst  of  it  is  that  the  man  has  his 
eloquence  and  his  dazzling  flashes  of  insight  on  condition  of 


RUSKIN  665 

a  prophetic  fury  which  will  not  stay  to  reconsider. 
His  value  lies  in  his  stimulant  energy,  his  power  of  disturb- 
ing vulgar  human  complacency  and  confronting  human  sel- 
fishness with  higher  motives  and  urgent  menaces." — -J.  M. 
Robertson. 

"  His  mind  is  too  discursive  for  poetry,  too  impetuous  and 
unrestrained.  He  rushes  eagerly  on  when  he  has  a  thought 
to  utter,  with  little  order  and  system,  careless  of  logical 
sequence  if  he  can  but  give  his  ideas  and  his  emotions  full 
expression.  ...  No  English  author  is  more  eloquent 
than  he  or  more  capable  of  sustained  flights  of  impassioned, 
magnetic,  and  powerful  writing." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"If  the  spirit  of  beauty  received  only  the  second  homage 
of  his  heart,  ...  his  was  an  intense  and  energetic  vas- 
salage for  all  of  that ;  and  whenever  the  spirit  of  modern  im- 
provement, real  or  so-called,  the  spirit  of  modern  invention, 
of  industry,  of  material  progress,  blasted  with  the  furnace  breath 
of  its  engine  the  fields,  the  woods,  which  were  in  his  eyes 
sacred  to  the  spirit  of  beauty,  he  cried  out  against  it  with  the 
bitterness  of  a  Hebrew  prophet  seeing  the  abominations  of 
desolation  carried  into  the  holy  place.  .  .  .  He  sees 
clearly  and  feels  earnestly,  and  what  he  sees  and  feels  he  de- 
scribes with  impetuous  eloquence.  There  are  whole  pages  of 
rhetoric  in  his  books  which  possess  all  the  magnificence  of 
Milton  or  Taylor.  But  he  is  not  always  equal  in  his  style 
nor  always  just  in  his  opinions." — Peter  Bayne. 

"Mr.  Rusk  in  is  always  striking,  always  eloquent,  always 
true  to  his  own  convictions  and  his  own  noble  nature." — 
Mary  Russell  Mitford. 


666  RUSK1X 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  You  knock  a  man  into  the  ditch,  and  then  you  tell  him  to  re- 
main in  the  position  in  which  Providence  has  placed  him.  That's 
modern  Christianity.  You  say  '  we  did  not  knock  him  into  the 
ditch.'  How  do  you  know  what  you  have  done  or  what  you  are 
doing?  That's  just  what  we  have  all  got  to  know,  and  what  we 
shall  never  know  until  the  question  with  us,  every  morning,  is,  not 
how  to  do  the  gainful  thing,  but  how  to  do  the  just  thing  ;  nor  until 
we  are  at  least  so  far  on  the  way  to  "being  Christian  as  to  have 
understood  that  maxim  of  the  poor  half-way  Mohammedan,  'One 
hour  in  the  execution  of  justice  is  worth  seventy  years  of  prayer.'  " 
— Christian  Justice. 

"  Do  you  know,  if  you  read  this,  that  you  cannot  read  that — 
that  what  you  lose  to-day  you  cannot  gain  to-morrow  ?  Will  you  go 
and  gossip  with  your  housemaid  or  your  stable  boy,  when  you  may 
talk  with  queens  and  kings,  or  flatter  yourselves  that  it  is  with 
any  worthy  consciousness  of  your  own  claims  to  respect  that  you 
jostle  with  the  hungry  and  common  crowd  for  entree  here  and  au- 
dience there,  when  all  the  while  this  eternal  court  is  open  to  you, 
with  its  society,  wide  as  the  world,  multitudinous  as  its  days,  the 
chosen  and  the  mighty  of  every  place  and  time  ?  Into  that  you 
may  enter  always ;  in  that  you  may  take  fellowship  and  rank  ac- 
cording to  your  wish  ;  from  that,  once  entered  into  it,  you  can 
never  be  outcast  but  by  your  own  fault." — Sesame  and  Lilies. 

''  Are  you  sure  there  is  a  heaven  ?  Sure  there  is  a  hell  ?  Sure 
that  men  are  dropping  before  your  faces  through  the  pavements 
of  the  street  into  eternal  fires  or  sure  that  they  are  not  ?  Sure 
that  at  your  own  death  you  are  going  to  be  delivered  from  all 
sorrow,  to  be  endowed  with  all  virtue,  to  be  gifted  with  all  felic- 
ity and  raised  into  perpetual  companionship  with  a  king,  com- 
pared to  whom  the  kings  of  the  earth  are  as  grasshoppers  and  the 
nations  as  dust  at  His  feet  ?  are  you  sure  of  this  ?  Or  if  not,  do 
any  of  us  so  much  as  care  to  make  it  sure  ?  and,  if  not,  how  can 
anything  that  we  do  be  right — how  can  anything  we  think  be 
wise  ;  what  honor  can  there  be  in  the  arts  that  amuse  us  or  what 
profit  in  the  possessions  that  please  ?  " —  The  Mystery  of  Life. 


RUSKIN  667 

4.  Biting  Satire — Fierce  Invective. — "  The  torrents 
of  scorn  and  the  unsparing  impeachment  with  which  Ruskin 
has  swept  down  upon  what  he  deems  the  purblind  selfishness  of 
the  moneyed  classes,  are  among  the  finest  passages  of  invective 
in  the  English  language  ;  while  savage  and  desperate  blows 
aimed  in  return  are  proof  that  those  attacked  are  not  slow  in 
standing  on  their  own  defence  nor  in  fighting  for  what  they 
suppose  to  be  the  national  weal." — -J.  M.  Mather. 

"  Just  as  he  transcends  Carlyle  in  word-magic,  so  does  he 
transcend  him  in  the  blazing  force  of  his  criticism  of  modern 
English  life,  where  he  sees  true  and  aims  straight. 
At  times  he  resorts  to  the  most  amazing  scurrility.  Of  Adam 
Smith  he  writes:  'It  is  true  that  the  half-bred  and  half- 
witted Scotchman  had  not  wit  enough  in  him  to  carve  so 
much  as  his  own  call's  head  on  a  whinstone  with  his  own 
hand.'  "— /.  M.  Robertson. 

"  He  is  of  the  Boanerges  order,  an  apostle  of  love,  and  full 
of  the  most  amiable  qualities,  yet  always  ready  to  call  down 
fire  from  heaven  to  consume  those  who  follow  another  stand- 
ard or  go  by  different  rules  from  his.  .  .  .  It  is  inevi- 
table with  every  reformer  that  he  should  feel  himself  as  sent  to 
a  world  lying  in  wickedness  and  from  which  every  good 
principle  and  power  of  perception  has  gone.  And  this  was 
the  attitude  taken  emphatically  by  Mr.  Ruskin  in  the  begin- 
ning of  his  career.  .  .  .  His  strictures  on  those  whose 
theories  or  practice  were  averse  to  his  rules  have  always  been 
severe  to  the  point  of  virulence." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  He  has  always,  and  bitterly,  sneered  at  the  Crystal  Palace, 
regardless  of  what  I  may  be  allowed  to  call  the  appealing 
smile  of  not  very  elevated  but  certainly  genuine  satisfaction 
on  the  faces  of  millions  of  men,  women,  boys,  girls,  and  little 
children,  whom  it  has  made  for  a  few  hours,  at  least,  ex- 
tremely happy.  He  has  inveighed  with  blistering  scorn 
against  the  long  line  of  suburban  London  streets  and  '  villas  ' 
inhabited  by  the  lower  middle  classes  of  the  metropolis  without 


668  RUSKIN 

its  ever  seeming  to  occur  to  him  that  in  those  not  very  bright 
or  variegated  abodes  thousands  of  honest  fellows, 
busy  all  day  in  city  offices,  snatch  a  little  fresh  air  in  the 
mornings  and  evenings,  toss  their  babies,  kiss  their  wives,  and 
lead  a  perhaps  not  very  refined  but  honest,  healthy,  manly, 
enjoyable  existence." — Peter  Bayne, 

"  There  is  nothing  going  on  among  us  as  notable  to  me 
as  those  fierce  lightning  bolts  Ruskin  is  copiously  and  desper- 
ately pouring  into  the  black  world  of  anarchy  all  around  him. 
No  other  man  in  England  that  I  meet  has  in  him  the  divine 
rage  against  iniquity,  falsity,  and  baseness  that  Ruskin  has 
and  that  every  man  ought  to  have." — Carlylc  to  Emerson, 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  In  the  carriage  with  me  were  two  American  girls  with  their 
fathers  and  mothers,  perhaps  of  the  class  which  has  lately  made 
so  much  money  suddenly  and  does  not  know  what  to  do  with  it. 
.  .  .  And  they  are  travelling  through  a  district  which,  if  any  in 
the  world,  should  touch  the  hearts  and  delight  the  eyes  of  young 
girls.  Between  Venice  and  Verona !  Portia's  villa  perhaps  in  sight 
upon  the  Brenta.  Juliet's  tomb  to  be  visited  in  the  evening, — 
blue  against  the  southern  sky  the  hills  of  Petrarch's  home.  .  .  . 
But  the  two  American  girls  were  neither  princesses  nor  peers 
nor  dreamers.  By  infinite  self-indulgence,  they  had  reduced 
themselves  to  two  pieces  of  white  putty  that  could  feel  pain.  The 
flies  and  dust  stuck  to  them  as  to  clay,  and  they  perceived,  be- 
tween Venice  and  Verona  nothing  but  the  flies  and  the  dust." 
— Fors  Clavigera. 

"  The  Alps  themselves,  which  your  own  poets  used  to  love  so 
reverently,  you  look  upon  as  soaped  poles  in  a  bear  garden,  which 
you  set  yourselves  to  climb  and  slide  down  again  with  '  shrieks 
of  delight.'  When  you  are  past  shrieking,  having  no  human 
articulate  voice  to  say  you  are  glad  with,  you  fill  the  quietude  of 
their  valleys  with  gunpowder  blasts,  and  rush  home  red  with  cu- 
taneous eruption  of  conceit  and  voluble  with  convulsive  hic- 
cough of  self-satisfaction." — Sesame  and  Lilies. 

"  Writers  like  the  present  critic  of  BlackwoocT s  Magazine 
[Christopher  North]  deserve  the  respect  due  to  honest,  hopeless, 


RUSKIN  669 

helpless  imbecility.  There  is  something  exalted  in  the  innocence 
of  their  feeblemindedness  ;  one  cannot  suspect  them  of  partiality, 
for  it  implies  feeling  ;  nor  of  prejudice,  for  it  implies  some  pre- 
vious acquaintance  with  their  subject.  We  are  not  insulted  with 
opinions  on  music  from  persons  ignorant  of  its  notes  ;  nor  with 
treatises  on  philology  by  persons  unacquainted  with  the  alphabet  ; 
but  here  is  page  after  page  of  criticism,  which  one  may  read  from 
end  to  end,  looking  for  something  which  the  author  knows  and 
finding  nothing." — Scotch  Reviewers. 

5.  Extravagance — Lack  of  Sanity. — "His  career  is 
fantastic  and  lacks  sanity.  .  .  .  He  is  undoubtedly 
compact  of  whim,  and  it  would  not  need  the  courage  of  a 
Euclid  to  define  him  as  a  body  with  one  side  only.  A  crotch- 
eteer with  a  tongue  of  gold ;  an  enthusiastic  lover  of  art  who 
systematically  ignores  some  of  the  first  laws  of  the  artist ;  a 
political  economist  who  would  bankrupt  Eldorado  and  unsettle 
Sparta ;  a  moralist  who  does  not  know  the  meaning  of  fair- 
ness ;  a  critic  who  does  not  know  the  meaning  of  balance — 
such  is  Mr.  Ruskin.  .  .  .  His  despised,  and  I  must  say  I 
think  rather  despicable,  Political  Economy  wins  the  ground 
that  his  aesthetics  had  lost ;  and  all  or  half  of  our  socialists  or 
semi-socialists  nowadays  talk  'Unto  this  Last'  without  its  mys- 
ticism and  with  twice  its  unreason.  .  .  .  He  is  probably 
more  prone  than  any  man  of  equal  talents  who  has  lived  in 
this  century  to  logical  fallacies  and  illicit  processes  of  every 
kind.  .  .  .  For  happier  expressions  of  crotchety  fancy 
where  shall  we  look  than  in  the  rather  numerous  passages 
where  Mr.  Ruskin  sets  forth  his  favorite  craze  that  bright 
colors  are  virtuous  and  dark  and  neutral  tints  wicked  ?  The 
thing  is  false ;  it  is  almost  silly  ;  but  it  is  so  charmingly  put 
that  you  chuckle  at  once  with  keen  pleasure  and  mild  scorn. 
Although  he  is  scarcely  ever  wrong  in  admiration, 
his  dislikes  are  so  capricious  and  so  unreasonable  that  one  is 
almost  safe  in  saying  that  when  Mr.  Ruskin  passes  from  praise 
to  blame  he  may  as  well  be  neglected." — Saintsbury. 


6/O  RUSKIN 

"  His  splendid  enthusiasm,  which  was  so  real  and  living  of 
its  kind,  carried  him  from  the  beginning  into  the  hot  injustice 
of  the  partisan.  ...  He  endeavored  to  persuade  the 
world  into  a  pre-scientific,  as  he  had  persuaded  the  painters 
into  a  pre-Raphaelite,  system.  .  .  .  His  'Unto  this  Last ' 
.  .  .  filled  the  vulgar  mind  with  ridicule  and  made  sober 
men  pause  and  wonder  and  often  smile  at  what  is  called  the 
utterly  unpractical  nature  of  these  suggestions.  .  .  .  He 
has  portrayed  a  workingman  such  as  never  was  on  sea  or 
shore. ' '  — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  His  mastering  eloquence  and  startling  insight  are  flavored 
by  a  passion  for  the  irrational  and  the  irrelevant,  which  leaves 
the  dispassionate  judge  in  doubt  whether  his  unreason  does  not 
balance,  as  it  certainly  discredits,  his  wisdom.  .  .  .  He 
wrote  of  things  Protestant  and  Catholic  entirely  in  the  spirit 
of  his  mother's  Evangelicism,  bringing  to  the  inflated  and  rhe- 
torical fanaticism  of  that  day  ...  his  own  wealth  of  lan- 
guage and  volume  of  sound,  but  no  thinking  worth  speaking 
of.  ...  He  estimates  the  results  of  machinery  by  fantastic 
absolute  standards  and  false  comparative  standards. 
IfonlyRuskin  could  always  or  in  general  have  written  with 
science  or  with  logic — could  have  given  a  work  of  con- 
nected economic  thought  without  the  irrelevances  and  irra- 
tionalities, which  are  not  science  but  mere  personal  perversity 
and  caprice — the  recasting  of  economics  might  have  gone 
on  a  great  deal  faster!  .  .  .  He  is  chronically  at  the 
mercy  of  verbal  allurements,  leading  him  into  those  etymo- 
logical mysticisms  over  which  Arnold  shrugged  his  shoulders. 
.  .  .  Where  sensory  impressions  cannot  sting  him  into 
clear  vision,  his  religion  remains  as  arbitrary  and  irrational 
as  when  it  was  instilled  into  him  by  his  mother,  his  scriptural- 
ism  as  mediaeval,  his  philosophy  as  childish." — J.  M.  Rob- 
ertson. 

"  He  is  not  always  equal  in  his  style,  nor  always  just  in  his 
opinions.  He  has  a  fondness  for  extravagance,  as  well  of 


RUSKIN  6/1 

thought  as  of  expression,  and  perpetually  indulges  his  mere 
conceits." — Parke  Godwin. 

"  He  rushes  eagerly  on  when  he  has  a  thought  to  utter, 
with  little  order  and  system,  careless  of  logical  sequence  if 
he  can  but  give  his  ideas  and  his  emotions  full  expression.  His 
is  the  prose  of  emotion  and  imagination  more  than  of  logic 
and  reason.  There  is  no  continuity,  no  system,  no  orderly 
unfolding  of  a  distinct  purpose,  in  his  '  Modern  Painters ;  ' 
and  the  same  is  true  in  a  large  measure  of  all  his  writings. ' ' 
—G.W.  Cooke. 

"  Mr.  Ruskin's  writings  afford  three  or  four  instances  of  slips 
in  reasoning  so  manifest  and  so  avoidable  that  they  seem  in- 
tentionally thrown  in  the  way  of  those  critics  who  will  always 
insist  upon  forming  the  estimate  of  a  field  of  wheat  from  its 
half-dozen  bad  ears." — Peter  Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  You  have  put  a  railroad  bridge  over  the  fall  of  Schaffhausen. 
You  have  tunnelled  the  cliffs  of  Lucerne  by  TelPs  chapel  ;  you 
have  destroyed  the  Clarens  shore  of  the  Lake  of  Geneva  ;  there 
is  not  a  quiet  valley  in  England  that  you  haven't  filled  with  bel- 
lowing fire  ;  there  is  not  a  particle  left  of  English  land  which  you 
have  not  trampled  coal  ashes  into,  nor  any  foreign  city  in  which 
the  spread  of  your  presence  is  not  marked  among  its  fair  old 
streets  and  happy  gardens  by  a  consuming  white  leprosy  of  new 
hotels  and  perfumers  shops." — Sesame  and  Lilies. 

"  This  gas-lighted  and  gas-inspired  Christianity  we  are  triumph- 
ant in,  and  draw  back  the  hem  of  our  robes  from  the  touch  of  the 
heretics  who  dispute  it.  .  .  .  You  might  sooner  get  lightning 
out  of  incense  smoke  than  true  action  or  passion  out  of  your 
modern  English  religion.  You  had  better  get  rid  of  the  smoke 
and  the  organ  pipes,  both.  Leave  them  and  the  gothic  windows 
and  the  painted  glass  to  the  property  man  ;  give  up  your  carbu- 
retted  hydrogen  ghost  in  one  healthy  expiration,  and  look  after 
Lazarus  at  the  doorstep." — Sesame  and  Lilies. 

"  You  care  for  pictures,  absolutely,  no  more  than  you  do  for 
the  bills  pasted  on  your  dead  walls.  There  is  always  room 


672  RUSKIN 

on  the  walls  for  the  bills  to  be  read, — never  for  the  pictures  to  be 
seen.  You  do  not  know  what  pictures  you  have  (by  repute)  in 
the  country,  nor  whether  they  are  false  or  true,  nor  whether  they 
are  taken  care  of  or  not ;  in  foreign  countries,  you  calmly  see  the 
noblest  existing  pictures  in  the  world  rotting  in  abandoned  wreck 
— (in  Venice  you  saw  the  Austrian  guns  deliberately  pointed  at 
the  palaces  containing  them),  and  if  you  heard  that  all  the  fine 
pictures  in  Europe  were  made  into  sand-bags  to-morrow  on  the 
Austrian  forts,  it  would  not  trouble  you  so  much  as  the  chance 
of  a  brace  or  two  of  game  less  in  your  own  bags  in  a  day's 
shooting.  That  is  your  national  love  of  Art." — Sesame  and 
Lilies. 

"  To  think  how  many  of  your  dull  Sunday  mornings  have  been 
spent,  for  propriety's  sake,  looking  chiefly  at  those  carved  angels 
blowing  trumpets  above  your  family  vaults  ;  and  never  one  of 
you  has  had  Christianity  enough  in  him  to  think  that  he  might  as 
easily  have  his  moors  full  of  angels  as  of  grouse.  And  now,  if 
ever  you  did  see  a  real  angel  before  the  day  of  judgment,  your 
first  thought  would  be — to  shoot  it.  And  for  your  '  family ' 
vaults,  what  will  be  the  use  of  them  to  you  ?  Does  not  Mr. 
Darwin  show  you  that  you  can't  wash  the  slugs  out  of  a  lettuce 
without  disrespect  to  your  ancestors  ?  Nay,  the  ancestors  of  the 
modern  political  economist  cannot  have  been  so  pure ; — they 
were  not — he  tells  you  himself — vegetation  slugs,  but  carnivorous 
ones — those,  to  wit,  that  you  see  also  carved  on  your  tombstones 
going  in  and  out  at  the  eyes  of  skulls.  And,  truly,  I  don't  know 
what  else  the  holes  in  the  heads  of  modern  political  economists 
were  made  for." — Conduct  of  Life. 

6.  Dogmatism — Arrogance — Conceit. — "With  ami- 
able egotism  and  a  high  yet  not  unjustifiable  sense  of  his  own 
worthiness  to  form  an  opinion,  .  .  .  he  sets  forth  without 
disguise,  not  only  praising  what  he  loves  but  denouncing 
what  he  hates  with  the  force  of  infallibility.  ...  A  gen- 
tle strain  of  self-satisfaction  and  self- belief  runs  through  all  his 
work  and  the  conviction  that  the  principles  that  produced 
such  a  man  as  himself  are  the  best  that  could  be  followed. 
.  .  .  In  his  later  years  this  beautiful  conviction  has  become 


RUSKIN  673 

so  hot  and  strong  as  to  lead  to  the  formation  of  much  dogma 
and  other  sort  of  conscious  infallibility." — Mrs.  Oliphant. 

"  He  was  gifted  by  nature  with  what  is  the  most  fortunate 
gift  for  a  man  of  genius,  the  most  unfortunate  for  another,  an 
entire  freedom  from  the  malady  of  self-criticism.  ...  It 
is  extremely  difficult  to  criticise  Mr.  Ruskin,  for  the  simple  rea- 
son that  he  has  never  condescended  to  criticise  himself.  He 
once  characteristically  boasted  that  he  had  never  withdrawn  a 
sentence  written  since  1860  as  erroneous  in  principle.  .  . 
Ruskin's  standards  are  often  mere  will-worship,  ideas  which 
he  has  casually  picked  up  in  a  state  of  hypothesis  from  other 
men,  and  which  he  erects  into  eternal  truths.  .  .  .  Dis- 
cipline is  what  Ruskin  has  always  lacked  ;  as  well  in  methods 
as  in  the  serene  self-confidence  which  has  enabled  him  to  de- 
liver himself  on  any  and  every  subject  without  any  suspicion 
that  he  is  talking  ill-informed  nonsense.  .  .  .  He  erected 
a  sort  of  private  pulpit,  and  in  '  Fors  Clavigera '  and  other 
things  made  almost  a  religion  of  his  own  idiosyncrasy.  .  .  . 
He  has  an  inevitable  and  all-pervading  tendency  to  general- 
ize— to  bring  things  under  what,  at  any  rate,  seems  a  law — 
to  erect  schemes  and  deduce  and  connect.  .  .  .  His 
mania  for  generalizing  blinds  him  to  the  absurd  on  one  side, 
as  we  constantly  find  it  doing  in  Continental  thinking." — 
Saintsbury. 

"  Like  Carlyle  and  Arnold,  he  himself  has  put  it  on  record 
that  he  has  failed  to  influence  his  generation.  .  .  .  But 
wkether  the  explanation  of  baffled  and  embittered  egotism 
will  serve  to  explain  the  defeatedness  of  Ruskin,  we  must  not 
attempt  to  say  till  we  have  investigated  His  case. 
Headlong  dogmatism  on  matters  on  which  his  thoughts  had 
never  gone  further  or  deeper  than  his  first  vivid  prejudice,  is 
to  the  last  as  much  a  characteristic  of  his  works  as  the  sudden 
and  penetrating  analysis  of  social  and  other  phenomena,  of 
which  his  first  burning  glance  has  pierced  his  heart.  .  .  . 
To  himself  Ruskin  probably  seems  a  revealer  of  the  divine 
43 


674  RUSKIN 

law  and  purpose  in  things.  .  .  .  Just  as  his  mother  would 
see  in  a  public  calamity  or  in  national  error  the  punishing 
or  blinding  hand  of  a  vengeful  deity,  so  to  the  last  he  falls 
into  the  mediseval'attitude  whenever  he  is  weary  of  exhorta- 
tion or  hopeless  of  obedience.  .  .  .  Arrogance  is  always 
driving  him  to  contemn  even  before  he  has  comprehended. 
.  .  .  It  lies  on  the  face  of  all  his  work  that  in  him  an  in- 
tense egotism  is  the  condition  of  his  eloquence  and  energy. 
At  times  certainly  it  seems  to  disappear,  in  homage  to  some 
one  of  his  masters,  Carlyle  or  another ;  but  even  then  he  iden- 
tifies his  prejudice  with  theirs,  and  never  does  he  long  abide 
in  the  attitude  of  impersonal  concern  for  simple  truth.  .  .  . 
In  all  his  polemic,  even  at  its  best  and  justest,  is  visible  his 
normal  inability  to  conceive  or  even  suspect  how  any. life  or 
opinion  can  be  right  and  good  which  clashes  with  his  tastes 
and  convictions.  He  lays  down  binding  principles  for  the 
regulation  of  all  life  in  terms  of  his  sentiments  for  the  time 
being.  .  .  .  One  result  of  his  temper  is  that  his  criticisms 
of  individuals  are  often  extravagantly  unjust.  .  .  .  It  is  a 
gross  presumption  on  the  part  of  any  man,  nay,  on  the  part  of 
any  woman,  to  lay  down  what  is  forever  to  be  done  and  what 
not  to  be  done  by  all  women.  .  .  .  Had  I  read  his  at- 
tack on  Buckle  without  knowing  it  was  made  by  a  mouth-piece 
of  passionate  caprice,  I  should  have  been  disposed  to  call  it 
the  most  nearly  ungenerous  impeachment  I  ever  saw  in  secular 
literature.  .  .  .  [Ruskin  is]  a  man  whose  notions  of  his 
'  relation  to  the  universe  '  have  reached  heights  of  extravagance 
seldom  obtained  in  black-on-white.  .  .  .  [He  has]  the 
prophetic  temper  of  overweening  self-confidence  and  the  self- 
worship  which  poses  as  Theism." — -J.  M.  Robertson. 

"His  own  personal  history  and  opinions,  his  manner  of 
life,  the  inmost  soul  of  the  man,  are  revealed  to  the  attentive 
reader  of  his  books,  as  is  the  case  with  almost  no  other 
author.  He  is  sympathetic  and  confidential,  touched  with 
egotism,  and  always  open  and  responsive  to  whatever  influ- 


RUSKIN  675 

ence  life  may  bring  to  him.  .  .  .  He  is  too  much  of 
a  dogmatist  to  be  overcome  by  any  of  that  distrust  which 
besets  less  positive  natures,  and  which  causes  them  to  ask  if 
their  neighbor's  creed  may  not  be  as  good  as  theirs.  If  he 
has  grown  more  tolerant  with  advancing  years,  he  has  not 
grown  less  positive." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  suppose,  that  when  people  see  my  name  down  for  a  hundred 
pounds  to  the  Cruikshank  Memorial  and  for  another  to  the 
Eyre  Fund,  they  think  only  that  I  have  more  money  than  I 
know  what  to  do  with.  Well,  the  giving  of  these  subscriptions 
simply  decides  the  question  whether  or  no  I  shall  be  able  to 
afford  a  journey  to  Switzerland  in  the  negative.  .  .  .  And  I 
believe  this  delay  (though  I  say  it)  will  be  really  something  of  a 
loss  to  the  travelling  public,  for  the  little  essay  was  intended  to 
explain  to  them,  in  a  familiar  way,  the  real  wonderfulness  of 
their  favorite  mountain,  the  Righi." — Time  and  Tide. 

"  But  I  speak  to  you  under  another  disadvantage,  by  which  I 
am  checked  in  frankness  of  utterance  not  only  here  but  every- 
where ;  namely,  that  1  am  never  fully  aware  how  far  my  audi- 
ences are  disposed  to  give  me  credit  for  real  knowledge  of  my 
subject,  or  how  far  they  grant  me  attention  only  because  I  have 
been  sometimes  thought  an  ingenious  or  pleasant  essayist 
upon  it.  For  I  have  had,  what,  in  many  respects,  I  boldly  call 
a  misfortune,  to  set  my  words  sometimes  prettily  together." 
—  The  Mystery  of  Life. 

"  I  must  repeat,  once  more,  and  with  greater  insistence  re- 
specting Sculpture  than  Painting,  that  I  do  not  in  the  least  set 
myself  up  for  a  critic  of  authenticity, — but  only  of  absolute 
goodness.  My  readers  may  trust  me  to  tell  them  what  is  well 
done  or  ill." — Modern  Painters. 

7.  Keen  Sensibility  —  Interpretation.  —  "  Next 
among  Mr.  Ruskin's  qualifications  for  his  task  must  be  men- 
tioned his  wonderfully  minute  observation  of  nature.  He  has 
watched  her  in  every  aspect ;  he  is  familiar  with  every  detail 


676  RUSKIN 

of  her  working.  And  yet,  with  his  careful  noting  of  par- 
ticulars, he  has  never  lost  sight  of  the  poetry  of  nature  as  a 
whole.  His  is  not  the  spirit  of  the  botanist  who  pulls  to 
pieces  a  weed  in  a  ditch,  blind  to  the  expanse  of  beauty  which 
lies  spread  out  before  him.  ...  As  a  general  rule,  no 
writing  is  less  effective  than  what  is  called  word-painting. 
It  is  for  the  most  part  unsatisfactory — failing  altogether  to 
convey  any  adequate  conception  of  the  original.  But  it  is  not 
so  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Ruskin.  His  fervid  imagination  en- 
ables him  to  realize,  his  abounding  style  enables  him  to  ex- 
press the  whole  meaning  of  the  painter." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 
"  Ruskin  had  a  passionate  love  of  nature  in  his  boyhood, 
which  his  father  gave  him  the  opportunity  of  gratifying,  but 
which  he  could  not  have  created.  His  power  of  comprehend- 
ing nature  was  as  instinctive  as  Mozart's  capacity  for  music, 
which  made  him  a  composer  at  the  age  of  four  and  the  despair 
of  his  masters  only  a  few  years  later.  As  he  walked  by  the  crags 
on  the  Derwentwater  and  looked  through  the  dark  roots 
into  the  waters  of  the  lake,  he  was  filled  with  '  intense  joy, 
mingled  with  awe.'  .  .  .  It  ['  Modern  Painters  ']  gave  to 
beauty  an  importance  in  the  whole  range  of  life  it  will  retain 
hereafter,  gave  to  nature  an  interpretation  of  the  highest  and 
richest  kind,  and  brought  sentiment  to  as  fine  an  expression 
in  literature  as  it  has  ever  known.  .  .  .  [He  has] 
Wordsworth's  capacity  for  seeing  nature  instinct  with  the 
Divine  Life  and  for  beholding  in  it  a  spiritual  beauty  and 
power  sublime  and  wonderful.  It  has  made  him  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  describers  of  the  natural  world.  New  beauties 
and  new  meanings  have  been  revealed  to  him  as  existing  in  all 
forms  and  expressions.  His  minute  observation,  his  powerful 
imagination,  his  intuition  of  beauty  and  harmony,  and  his 
ability  to  make  others  feel  that  what  he  describes  really  exists, 
have  made  him  a  wonderful  interpreter  of  nature. 
He  penetrates  through  the  facts  of  nature  to  their  meanings 
for  the  artist  and  the  lover  of  beauty,  seeing  what  others  pass 


RUSKIN  677 

by  without  waiting  to  behold.  ...  As  the  interpreter 
of  nature,  Ruskin  is  the  equal  of  Rousseau  as  the  interpreter  of 
human  sentiment,  and  he  has  produced  a  similar  change  in 
the  common  opinions  of  men.  .  .  .  He  is  the  lover  of 
nature  in  all  her  aspects  of  repose  and  sublimity  ;  alike  in  her 
quiet  beauty  and  her  amazing  splendor. " — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  For  myself,  I  doubt  whether  Mr.  Ruskin  has  any  great 
qualities  but  his  eloquence  and  his  true,  honest  love  of  nature. 
As  a  man  to  stand  up  before  a  society  of  which  one  part  was 
fashionably  languid  and  the  other  only  too  busy  and  greedy 
and  preach  to  it  of  Nature's  immortal  beauty  and  the  true  way 
to  do  her  reverence,  I  think  Mr.  Ruskin  had,  and  has,  a  place 
almost  worthy  the  dignity  of  a  prophet.  I  think,  too,  that  he 
has  the  capacity  to  fill  the  place,  to  fulfil  its  every  duty. 
No  man  since  Wordsworth's  brightest  days  did  half 
so  much  to  teach  his  countrymen  and  those  who  speak  his 
language  ho\v  to  appreciate  that  silent  nature  '  which  never  did 
betray  the  heart  that  loved  her.'  " — Justin  McCarthy. 

"  With  an  explicitness  which  was  a  duty  and  with  that 
scientific  calmness  with  which  any  man  may  recall  and  state 
the  impressions  of  boyhood,  Mr.  Ruskin  has  informed  us  of 
the  emotions  with  which,  in  his  earliest  years,  he  looked  upon 
nature.  He  says,  '  In  such  journeyings,  whenever  they 
brought  me  near  hills,  and  in  all  mountain  ground  and  scen- 
ery, I  had  a  pleasure  .  .  .  comparable  for  intensity  only 
to  the  joy  of  a  lover  in  being  near  a  noble  and  kind  mistress. 
.  .  Although  there  was  no  definite  religious  sentiment 
mingled  with  it,  there  was  a  continual  perception  of  sanctity 
in  the  whole  of  nature,  from  the  slightest  thing  to  the  vastest ; 
I  could  only  feel  this  perfectly  when  alone,  and  then  it  would 
often  make  me  shiver  from  head  to  foot  with  the  joy  and  fear 
of  it  when,  after  being  some  time  away  from  hills,  I  first  got 
to  the  shore  of  a  mountain  river,  where  the  brown  water 
circled  among  the  pebbles.'  It  is  of  the  emotions  experienced 
amid  mountain  scenery  that  Ruskin  here  more  expressively 


678  RUSKIN 

speaks.  .  .  .  Endowed  with  the  keenest  sensibility  to 
the  influences  of  nature,  he  has  observed  them  with  accuracy 
and  at  the  same  time  with  strong  poetic  feeling.  Few  men 
are  more  alive  to  the  beauties  of  art,  and  none  have  studied 
its  actual  manifestations  with  more  diligence.  Applying  his 
knowledge  of  nature  to  works  of  art,  he  is  able  to  judge  their 
comparative  merits  with  a  rare  taste  and  profound  sympathy. 
Ruskin  stands  among  a  select  and  honored  few  who 
have  interpreted  nature's  meaning -and  conveyed  her  bounty 
to  mankind.  He  has  spoken  with  a  voice  of  power  of  those 
pictures  which  ever  change  yet  are  ever  new,  which  are  old  yet 
are  not  dim  or  defaced,  of  the  beauty  of  which  all  art  is  an  ac- 
knowledgment, of  the  admiration  of  which  all  art  is  the  result, 
but  which,  having  hung  in  our  view  since  childhood,  we  are 
apt  to  pass  lightly  by.  ...  At  his  bidding,  we  awake 
to  a  new  consciousness  of  the  beauty  and  grandeur  of  the 
world.  We  have  more  distinct  ideas  as  to  what  it  is ;  we 
know  better  how  to  look  for  it." — Peter  Bayne. 

"  He  sees  the  glorious  world  as  we  have  never  known  it 
or  have  perhaps  forgotten  to  look  upon  it.  He  takes  the  first 
example  to  hand  ;  the  stones  which  he  makes  into  bread  ; 
the  dust  and  scraps  and  dry  sticks  and  moss  which  are  lying 
to  his  hand  ;  he  is  so  penetrated  with  the  glory  and  beauty 
of  it  all,  of  the  harmony  into  which  we  are  set,  that  it  sig- 
nifies little  to  him  upon  what  subject  he  preaches  and  by 
what  examples  he  illustrates  his  meaning." — A,  T.  Ritchie. 

"  He  has  read  the  book  of  nature  with  unwearied  diligence 
and  conscientious  observation.  He  cannot  only  see  rightly, 
but  he  can  express  with  passion  which  is  sufficiently  tempered 
to  be  intense  and  with  copiousness  sufficiently  charged  with 
fact  to  be  interesting  that  which  he  has  seen  in  the  natural 
world.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  for  many  of  us  whose 
deepest  pleasure  is  in  the  beauty  of  the  world,  he  has  tripled 
our  power  of  pleasure.  And  it  has  been  done,  not  as  the 
poet  does  it,  by  developing  intensity  of  feeling  but  by  ap- 


RUSKIN  679 

pealing  to  feelings  through  the  revelation  of  fact  and  by  the 
exquisite-delight  which  we  feel  he  takes  in  the  discovery  and 
beauty  of  the  fact  and  by  the  charm  of  the  vehicle  through 
which  he  tells  the  story. ' ' — Stopford  Brooke. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Few  of  us,  perhaps,  have  thought,  in  watching  its  career 
across  our  own  mossy  hills  or  listening  to  the  murmur  of  the 
springs  amidst  the  mountain  quietness,  that  the  chief  masters  of 
the  human  imagination  owed,  and  confessed  that  they  owed,  the 
force  of  their  noblest  thoughts,  not  to  the  flowers  of  the  valley 
nor  the  majesty  of  the  hill,  but  to  the  flying  cloud.  Yet  they 
never  saw  it  fly,  as  we  may  in  our  own  England.  So  far,  at  least, 
as  I  know  the  clouds  of  the  south,  they  are  often  more  terrible 
than  ours,  but  the  English  Pegasus  is  swifter.  On  the  Yorkshire 
and  Derbyshire  hills,  when  the  rain-cloud  is  low  and  much  bro- 
ken and  the  steady  west-wind  fills  all  space  with  its  strength,  the 
sungleams  fly  like  golden  vultures  :  they  are  flashings  rather 
than  shinings  ;  the  dark  spaces  and  the  dazzling  race  and  skim 
along  the  acclivities  and  dart  and  dip  from  crag  to  dell,  swallow- 
like  ; — no  Graiae  these — gray  and  withered  :  grey-hounds  rather, 
following  the  Cerinthian  stag  with  the  golden  antlers." — The  An- 
gel of  the  Sea. 

"  Most  people  think  of  waves  as  rising  and  falling.  But  if 
they  look  at  the  sea  carefully,  they  will  perceive  that  the  waves 
do  not  rise  and  fall.  They  change.  Change  both  place  and 
form,  but  they  do  not  fall ;  one  wave  goes  on,  and  on,  and  still 
on  ;  now  lower,  now  higher,  now  tossing  its  mane  like  a  horse, 
now  building  itself  together  like  a  wall,  now  shaking,  now  steady, 
but  still  the  same  wave,  till  at  last  it  seems  struck  by  something 
and  changes,  one  knows  not  how — becomes  another  wave." — Of 
the  Pathetic  Fallacy. 

"  And  therefore  we  see  at  once  that  the  stem  of  Caspar  Pous- 
sin's  tall  tree,  on  the  right  of  the  La  Riccia,  in  the  National  Gal- 
lery, is  a  painting  of  a  carrot  or  a  parsnip,  not  the  trunk  of  a 
tree.  For,  being  so  near  that  every  individual  leaf  is  visible,  we 
should  not  have  seen,  in  nature,  one  branch  or  stem  actually 
tapering.  We  should  have  received  an  impression  of  graceful 


680  RUSKIN 

diminution  ;  but  we  should  have  been  able,  on  examination,  to 
trace  it  joint  by  joint,  fork  by  fork,  into  the  thousand  minor  sup- 
ports of  the  leaves.  Caspar  Poussin's  stem,  on  the  contrary, 
only  sends  off  four  or  five  branches  altogether,  and  both  it  and 
they  taper  violently  and  without  showing  why  or  wherefore — 
without  parting  with  a  single  twig — without  showing  one  vestige 
of  roughness  or  excrescence — and  leaving,  therefore,  their  un- 
fortunate leaves  to  hold  on  as  best  they  may.  The  latter,  how- 
ever, are  clever  leaves,  and  support  themselves  as  swarming  bees 
do,  hanging  on  by  each  other." — Of  Truth  of  Vegetation. 


8.  Inconsistency  —  Self-Contradiction.  —  "  It    has 

never,  during  Mr.  Ruskin's  long  career,  troubled  him  to  bethink 
himself  whether  he  knew  what  he  was  talking  about,  whether 
he  was  or  was  not  talking  nonsense,  whether  he  was  or  was 
not  contradicting  something  that  he  had  said  before.  .  .  . 
In  his  inequalities  of  style  Mr.  Ruskin  is  very  much  at  one 
with  all  practitioners  of  prose  during  this  century.  .  .  . 
But  where  he  is  almost  unique  is  in  his  inequalities  of  thought 
and  matter.  ...  At  times  his  thought  has  really  mar- 
vellous vigor,  felicity,  and  truth.  At  others,  and  just  as 
often,  it  borders  on  sheer  nonsense.  .  .  .  [This  charac- 
teristic is  illustrated  in]  that  marvellous  compound  of 
ingenuity  and  folly,  'The  Queen  of  the  Air,'  [and  in] 
that  astonishing  mixture  of  namby-pamby  guess- 
work and  suggestive  thought,  'The  Ethics  of  the  Dust.'  ' 
— Saintsbury. 

"  Ruskin  is,  so  far  as  my  reading  goes,  the  most  self-con- 
tradictory writer  who  ever  lived.  ...  In  his  art  criti- 
cism he  has  a  first  principle  for  every  day  in  the  year  and 
every  hour  of  the  day ;  pictures  and  practices  are  forever 
being  praised  or  blamed  under  general  laws  set  up  for  that  oc- 
casion only.  At  one  time  he  will  denounce  as  unworthy  all 
writing  for  money  ;  at  another  he  will  present  as  model  lives 
those  of  Shakespeare  and  Scott,  who  systematically  wrote  to 


RUSKIN  68 1 

make  money.  .  .  .  He  contradicts  himself  in  the  same 
book,  sometimes  in  the  same  chapter,  sometimes  in  the  same 
page.  .  .  .  The  frequent  discovery  that  he  sees  things  alto- 
gether differently  at  different  times,  seems  never  to  have  im- 
paired his  habitual,  his  constitutional,  confidence  in  the  right- 
ness  of  his  impressions." — -J,  M.  Robertson. 

"No  man  has  ever  contradicted  himself  so  often,  so  reck- 
lessly, so  complacently  as  Mr.  Ruskin  has  done.  It  is  absurd 
to  call  him  a  great  critic,  even  in  art ;  for  he  seldom  expresses 
an  opinion  one  day  without  flatly  contradicting  it  the  next. 
He  is  a  great  writer,  audacious,  .  .  .  eloquent,  writing 
out  of  the  fulness  of  the  present  mood  and  heedless  how  far 
the  impulse  of  to-day  may  contravene  that  of  yesterday." — 
Justin  McCarthy. 

"  Ruskin  has  phases  of  impression,  but  his  noble  instinct 
is  for  the  truth,  although  the  example  he  gives  at  times  seems  so 
changeable  and  his  system  of  instruction  almost  hopeless  for 
students  who  have  to  live  during  their  short  lives,  to  pay  their 
way  and  their  long  bills  as  well  as  to  study  their  art." — Anne 
Thackeray  Ritchie. 

"  We  feel  the  pleasure  of  meeting,  in  the  middle  of  a  num- 
ber of  writers  cut  out  after  the  same  pattern,  with  one  who 
cuts  out  his  own  pattern  and  alters  it  year  by  year. 
We  should  be  dismayed  to  lose  the  most  original  man  in  Eng- 
land. .  .  .  It  is  quite  an  infinite  refreshment  to  come 
across  a  person  who  can  gravely  propose  to  banish  from  Eng- 
land all  manufactures  which  require  the  use  of  fire,  who  has 
the  quiet  audacity  to  contradict  himself  in  the  face  of  all  the 
reviewers,  and  who  spins  his  net  of  fancies  and  thoughts  with- 
out caring  a  straw  what  the  world  thinks  of  them.  .  .  . 
The  good  which  a  man  of  so  marked  an  originality  does  to  us 
all  is  great  if  it  is  provoking ;  and  we  would  rather  possess  him 
with  his  errors  than  a  hundred  steady-going  writers  who  can 
give  solemn  reasons  for  all  they  say." — Stopford Urookc. 


682  RUSKIN 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Therefore,  the  first  necessity  of  social  life  is  the  clearness  of 
national  conscience  in  enforcing  the  law, — that  he  should  keep 
who  has  justly  earned." — The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive.  [Compare 
this  with  the  second  illustration.] 

"  Has  not  the  man  who  has  worked  for  the  money  a  right  to 
use  it  as  best  he  can  ?  No,  in  this  respect,  money  is  now  exactly 
what  mountain  promontories  over  public  roads  were  in  olden 
times.  The  barons  fought  for  them  fairly : — the  strongest  and 
cunningest  got  them ;  then  fortified  them  and  made  every  one 
who  passed  below  pay  toll.  Well,  capital  now  is  exactly  what 
crags  were  then.  Men  fight  fairly  for  their  money  ;  but  once 
having  got  it,  the  fortified  millionaire  can  make  everybody  who 
passes  below  pay  toll  to  his  million  and  build  another  tower  of 
his  money  castle."  —  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive.  [Compare  this 
with  his  general  economical  doctrines.] 

This  characteristic  finds  clearest  illustration,  not  in  detached 
paragraphs,  but  in  the  general  tenor  of  a  volume. 

Q.  Moral  Aim — Didacticism. — "He  had  a  strong  but 
capricious  moral  sense.  .  .  .  His  insatiable  appetite  for 
moral  applications  and  his  firm  belief  in  his  moral  mission 
blind  him,  as  we  find  these  things  do  often  the  Britons. 
.  .  .  He  is  a  man  with  an  ardent  sense  of  duty  combined 
with  an  ardent  desire  to  do  good ;  eager  to  throw  everything 
into  the  form  of  a  general  law,  but  eager  also  to  give  that  gen- 
eral law,  directly  or  indirectly,  mystically  or  simply,  an  ethical 
bearing  and  interpretation." — Saintsbury. 

"  The  importance  of  individual  character,  the  value  of  work 
in  forming  it,  the  supremacy  of  duty  in  directing  it,  these  are 
some  of  the  leading  moral  lessons  that  Mr.  Ruskin,  like  Car- 
lyle,  has  had  to  teach,  but  to  which  he  has  given  a  new  turn 
by  adding  the  sanction  of  art.  ...  In  life  the  only 
liberty  worth  having  is  founded  on  personal  discipline.  This 
is  why  Mr.  Ruskin  lays  so  much  stress  upon  the  dignity  and 
usefulness  of  manual  labor. " — G.  IV:  Cooke. 


RUSKIN  683 

"  Nobody  makes  a  more  thrilling  appeal  to  the  individual 
conscience  or  a  more  direct  demand  for  individual  action." 
— -J.  M.  Robertson. 

"It  is  as  a  moralist  and  a  reformer  and  in  his  passionate 
love  for  humanity  that  we  must  recognize  him.  His  place  is 
in  the  pulpit,  speaking  largely  and  in  the  unsectarian  sense. 
.  Ruskin  could  never,  any  more  than  Savonarola, 
escape  the  condition  of  being  in  every  fibre  of  his  nature  a 
moralist  and  not  an  artist,  and  as  he  advanced  in  life  the 
ethical  side  of  his  nature  more  and  more  asserted  its  mastery, 
though  less  and  less  in  theological  terms." — W.  J.  Stillman. 

"  Mr.  Ruskin's  lectures  upon  art  are  apt  to  pass  into  moral 
or  religious  discourses." — Leslie  Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Love  and  trust  are  the  only  mother-milk  of  any  man's  soul. 
So  far  as  he  is  hated  and  mistrusted,  his  powers  are  destroyed. 
Do  not  think  that  with  impunity  you  can  follow  the  eyeless  fool 
and  shout  with  the  shouting  charlatan,  and  that  the  men  you  thrust 
aside  with  gibe  and  blow  are  thus  sneered  and  crushed  into  the 
best  service  they  can  do  you.  I  have  told  you  they  will  not  serve 
you  for  pay.  They  cannot  serve  you  for  scorn." — Peace. 

"  The  importance  of  the  results  thus  obtained  by  the  slightest 
change  of  direction  of  the  infant  streamlets,  furnishes  an  interest- 
ing type  of  the  formation  of  human  characters  by  habit.  Every 
one  of  those  notable  ravines  and  crags  is  the  expression,  not  of 
any  sudden  violence  done  to  the  mountain,  but  of  its  little  habits 
persisted  in  continually.  It  was  created  with  one  ruling  instinct  ; 
but  its  destiny  depended  nevertheless,  for  effective  result,  on  the 
direction  of  the  small  and  all  but  invisible  tricklings  of  water, 
in  which  the  first  shower  of  rain  found  its  way  down  its  sides. 
The  feeblest,  most  insensible  oozings  of  the  drops  of  dew  among 
its  dust  were  in  reality  arbiters  of  its  eternal  form  ;  commissioned, 
with  a  touch  more  tender  than  that  of  a  child's  finger, — as  silent 
and  slight  as  the  fall  of  a  half-checked  tear  on  a  maiden's  cheek, 
— to  fix  forever  the  forms  of  peak  and  precipice  and  hew  those 
leagues  of  lifted  granite  into  the  shapes  that  were  to  divide  the 
earth  and  its  kingdoms." — Crests. 


684  RUSKIN 

"  It  was  a  beautiful  thought,  yet  an  erring  one,  as  all  thoughts 
are  which  oppose  the  Law  to  the  Gospel.  When  people  read, 
'  the  law  came  by  Moses,  but  grace  and  truth  by  Christ,'  do  they 
suppose  that  the  law  was  ungracious  and  untrue  ?  The  law  was 
given  for  a  foundation  ;  the  grace  (or  mercy)  and  truth  for  fulfil- 
ment ; — the  whole  forming  one  glorious  Trinity  of  judgment, 
mercy,  and  truth.  And  if  people  would  but  read  the  text  of  their 
Bibles  with  heartier  purpose  of  understanding  it,  instead  of  su- 
perstitiously,  they  would  see  that  throughout  the  parts  which  they 
are  intended  to  make  most  personally  their  own  (the  Psalms)  it 
is  always  the  Law  which  is  spoken  of  with  chief  joy." — The  Angel 
of  the  Sea. 


10.  Spirituality — Biblical  Coloring. — "  His  writings 
are  .  .  .  characterized  by  a  spirituality  of  tone.  Their 
tendency  is  to  purify  and  ennoble,  to  enthrone  duty,  reveal 
goodness,  and  encourage  admiration,  hope,  and  love.  He 
seeks  to  rescue  man  from  the  engrossing  spirit  of  greed  and 
woman  from  the  life  of  frivolity  and  fashion.  He  has  a  pro- 
found reverence  for  the  God  of  his  fathers,  and  firmly  holds  a 
belief  in  the  unseen.  Righteousness  with  him  is  no  slowly 
evolved  quality  but  a  Divine  principle,  eternal  and  unchange- 
able. .  .  .  Many  of  the  poems  reveal  a  depth  of  devo- 
tion and  a  spirituality  of  tone  which  show  his  youth  to  have 
been  lived  beneath  the  dominance  of  intense  religious  feeling. 
.  .  .  [He  cannot]  separate  the  principles  of  biblical  teaching 
from  the  duties  of  every-day  life.  .  .  .  They  [his  writings] 
are  free  from  the  materializing  influences  common  to  so  much 
of  the  teaching  of  the  present  age.  ...  If  there  be  a 
supreme  truth  flowing  out  of  Ruskin's  writings,  it  is  the  enno- 
bling and  spiritualizing  truth  that  reminds  us  that  we  are  born 
in  the  Divine  image  for  Divine  ends.  .  .  .  His  power  to 
make  a  verse  of  Scripture  interpret  a  phenomenon  of  nature, 
his  apt  method  of  reducing  prophetic  and  apostolic  principles 
to  every-day  life,  and  his  unrivalled  skill  in  interweaving 
sacred  phraseology  with  his  own,  rnake  his  writings  sugges- 


RUSKIN  685 

tlve  and  interpretive  of  the  greatest  of  all  books."—/".  M. 
Mather. 

"A  notable  characteristic  of  all  these  writings  of  Ruskin 
.  .  .  is  the  earnestness  and  biblical  simplicity  of  their  re- 
ligion. His  father  and  mother,  especially  the  latter,  were  fer- 
vently devout  persons  of  the  evangelical  school,  which  in 
Ruskin's  early  days  had  not  lost  its  intellectual  prestige.  With 
the  ingenuous  passion  of  an  affectionate,  trustful,  dutiful  boy, 
whose  home  had  been  for  him  a  temple,  he  accepted  loyally, 
as  beyond  all  dispute,  the  creed  he  learned  at  his  mother's 
knee. ' ' — Peter  Bayne. 

"  We  must  recur  to  a  leading  characteristic  of  Mr.  Ruskin's 
writings  which  gives  to  them  their  purest  beauty  and  the  deep- 
est truth ;  we  mean  the  profound  religious  feeling  which  per- 
vades them  all.  .  .  .  He  cannot  look  on  the  flaming 
wings  of  the  angels  of  Angelice  without  rising  in  thought  to 
the  heavenly  hosts  above." — H.  H.  Lancaster. 

11  High  above  all  else  he  puts  the  development  of  the  soul 
through  the  world-experiences  of  man  ;  and  underneath  he 
ranges  the  other  functions  down  to  the  lowest,  on  which  all 
the  others  rest.  He  has  devised  no  system  and  made  no  table 
of  human  duties ;  but  he  ever  keeps  before  himself  the  fact 
that  human  nature  is  a  whole,  that  in  a  full  and  faithful  life 
every  faculty  shares,  and  that  we  are  not  to  live  for  what  is 
sensual  and  subordinate.  ...  If  his  love  of  nature  and 
beauty  was  great  in  its  earliest  manifestations,  not  the  less  em- 
phatically was  he  drawn  toward  that  inward  realm  where  the 
higher  nature  discloses  other  attractions  as  fascinating  and  as 
real.  His  love  for  the  unreal  and  spiritual  was  a  master  pas- 
sion as  ardent  as  that  which  guided  him  to  art  and  to  beauty 
of  nature,  so  that  he  could  never  look  upon  the  one  without 
being  confident  the  other  was  interwoven  with  whatever  it  is 
or  can  become.  .  .  .  But  the  currents  of  his  faith  run  too 
deep  and  broad  for  any  real  lapse  of  it  or  for  any  real  pessi- 
mism that  sees  the  world  abandoned  of  God.  .  .  .  His  is 


686  RUSKIN 

the  religion  of  the  spirit,  of  one  who  sincerely  loves  worship 
and  praise,  and  whose  soul  is  entranced  by  visions  of  the  eter- 
nal. "_  G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  I  have  next  with  deeper  gratitude  to  chronicle  what  I 
owed  to  my  mother  for  the  resolutely  consistent  lessons  which 
so  exercised  me  in  the  Scriptures  as  to  make  every  word  of 
them  familiar  to  my  ear  as  habitual  music.  ...  In  this 
way  she  began  with  the  first  verse  of  Genesis  and  went 
straight  through  to  the  last  verse  of  the  Apocalypse ;  hard 
names,  numbers,  Levitical  law  and  all ;  and  began  with 
Genesis  again  the  next  day.  .  .  .  After  our  chapters 
.  .  I  had  to  learn  a  few  verses  by  heart  or  repeat  some- 
thing I  had  already  learned.  ...  I  had  to  learn  the 
whole  body  of  the  fine  old  Scottish  paraphrases  . 
and  to  these,  together  with  the  Bible  itself,  I  owe  the  first 
cultivation  of  my  ear  in  sound." — Ruskin. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  She  [England]  has  not  yet  read  often  enough  that  old  story  of 
the  Samaritan's  mercy.  He  whom  he  saved  was  going  down  from 
Jerusalem  to  Jericho — to  the  accursed  city  (so  the  old  church  used 
to  understand  it).  He  should  nol  have  left  Jerusalem  ;  it  was 
his  own  fault  that  he  went  out  into  the  desert,  and  fell  among  the 
thieves,  and  was  left  for  dead.  Every  one  of  these  English  children, 
in  their  day,  took  the  desert  bypath,  as  he  did,  and  fell  among 
friends — took  to  making  bread  out  of  stones  at  their  bidding,  and 
then  died,  torn  and  famished  ;  careful  England,  in  her  pure, 
priestly  dress,  passing  by  on  the  other  side.  So  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned, that  is  the  account  ive  have  to  give  of  them." — Peace. 

"  For  these  are  the  robes  of  love  of  the  Angel  of  the  Sea.  To 
these  that  name  is  chiefly  given,  the  '  spreadings  of  the  clouds,' 
from  their  extent,  their  gentleness,  their  fullness  of  rain.  Note 
how  they  are  spoken  of  in  Job  xxxvi.  29-31.  '  By  them  judgeth 
he  the  people  ;  He  giveth  meat  in  abundance.  With  clouds  he 
covereth  the  light.  He  hath  hidden  the  light  in  his  hands,  and 
commanded  that  it  should  return.  He  speaks  of  it  to  his  friend  ; 
that  it  is  his  possession  and  that  he  may  ascend  thereto.'  That, 


RUSKIN  687 

then,  is  the  Sea-Angel's  message  to  God's  friend  ;  that,  the  mean- 
ing of  those  strange  golden  lights  and  purple  flushes  before  the 
morning  rain.  The  rain  is  sent  to  judge  and  feed  us;  but  the 
light  is  the  possession  of  God,  and  they  may  ascend  thereto — 
where  the  tabernacle  veil  will  cross  and  part  its  rays  no  more." 
—  The  Angel  of  the  Sea. 

"  You  can  scarcely,  at  present,  having  been  all  your  lives,  hith- 
erto, struggling  for  security  of  mere  existence,  imagine  the  peace 
of  heart  which  follows  the  casting  out  of  the  element  of  selfish- 
ness as  the  root  of  action  ;  but  it  is  peace,  observe,  only,  that  is 
promised  to  you,  not  at  all  necessarily,  or  at  least  primarily,  joy. 
You  shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls  when  first  you  take  on  you  the 
yoke  of  Christ ;  but  joy  only  when  you  have  borne  it  as  long  as 
He  wills  and  are  called  to  enter  the  joy  of  your  Lord." — Fors 
Clavigera. 

ii.  Philanthropy — Desire   for   Social    Reform. — 

"  Compassion  for  the  poor  is  the  last  word  of  Mr.  Ruskin's 
books  on  art  as  well  as  of  those  on  morals.  He  said  that 
neither  sound  art,  policy,  nor  religion  can  exist  in  England 
until,  neglecting,  if  must  be,  your  own  pleasure -gar  dens  and 
pleasure-chambers,  you  resolve  that  the  streets  which  are  the 
habitations  of  the  poor  .  .  .  shall  be  again  restored  to 
the  rule  of  the  spirits.  Ruskin  is  possessed  of  ardent  feeling 
and  intense  sympathies.  His  heart  is  warm  and  glowing  and 
his  affections  strong.  To  help  others  is  to  him  a  delight,  and 
it  is  one  of  the  noblest  objects  life  offers  him.  He  feels  with 
the  poor,  takes  their  sorrows  and  burdens  to  his  own  heart, 
and  has  for  them  whatever  of  sympathy  man  can  give  to 
man.  .  .  .  No  one  has  shown  such  powerful  imagination 
as  he  in  lifting  the  veil  which  hides  the  grim  realities  of  pov- 
erty from  the  gay  dreams  of  wealth  or  such  fearless  satire 
in  mocking  the  churches  for  dining  with  the  rich  and  preach- 
ing to  the  poor." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  The  moral  influence  of  Ruskin  is  also  felt  in  the  direc- 
tion of  social  reforms.  Organizations  for  the  improvement  of 
the  people  have  not  only  been  suggested  and  elaborated  in 


688  RUSKIN 

his  writings,  but,  in  some  cases,  started  and  sustained  largely 
by  their  motive  power.  .  .  .  And  there  are  not  a  few  men 
and  women  engaged  in  philanthropic  labor  in  the  present  day 
who  acknowledge  his  teaching  as  the  force  first  rousing  their 
efforts  and  since  guiding  and  encouraging  them  in  their  self- 
appointed  duties  among  the  poor." — -J.  H.  Friswell. 

"'Sesame  and  Lilies'  is,  and  most  deservedly  so,  a 
favorite  book  with  the  public.  Who  can  ever  forget  the 
closing  passages,  in  which  the  poet,  looking  round  about, 
seeing  the  need  of  the  children  even  greater  than  that  of  their 
elders,  bids  women  go  forth  into  the  garden  and  tend  to  the 
flowerets  lying  broken  with  their  fresh  leaves  torn,  set  them 
in  order  in  their  little  beds,  fence  them  from  the  fierce  wind. 
— '  Flowers  with  eyes  like  yours  and  thoughts  like  yours.'  ' 
— Anne  Thackeray  Ritchie. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Well,  the  poor  seem  to  have  a  prejudice  against  the  work- 
house which  the  rich  have  not ;  for,  of  course,  every-one  who  takes 
a  pension  from  the  government  goes  into  the  workhouse  on  a  grand 
scale  ;  only  the  workhouses  for  the  rich  do  not  involve  the  idea 
of  work  and  should  be  called  play-houses.  But  the  poor  like  to 
die  independently,  it  appears  ;  perhaps  if  we  made  the  play-houses 
for  them  pretty  or  pleasant  enough,  or  gave  them  their  pensions 
at  home,  and  allowed  them  a  little  introductory  speculation  with 
the  public  money,  their  minds  might  be  reconciled  to  the  condi- 
tion. .  .  .  We  make  our  relief  either  so  insulting  to  them  or 
so  painful  that  they  rather  die  than  take  it  at  our  hands." — Sesame 
and  Lilies, 

11  Suppose  the  captain  of  a  frigate  saw  it  right,  or  were  by  any 
chance  obliged  to  place  his  own  son  in  the  position  of  a  common 
sailor  ;  as  he  would  then  treat  his  son,  he  is  bound  always  to  treat 
every  one  of  the  men  under  him.  So,  also,  supposing  the  master 
of  a  manufactory  saw  it  right,  or  were  by  any  chance  obliged  to 
place  his  own  son  in  the  position  of  an  ordinary  workman  ;  as  he 
would  then  treat  his  son,  he  is  always  bound  to  treat  every  one  of 
his  men." — The  Roots  of  Honour. 


RUSKIN  689 

"The  ant  and  the  moth  have  cells  for  each  of  their  young,  but 
our  little  ones  lie  in  festering  heaps,  in  homes  that  consume  them 
like  graves ;  and  night  by  night  from  the  corners  of  our  streets 
rises  up  the  cry  of  the  homeless — '  I  was  a  stranger  and  ye  took 
me  not  in.'  .  .  .  The  mistake  of  the  best  men  through  gen- 
eration after  generation  has  been  that  great  one  of  thinking  to 
help  the  poor  by  almsgiving  and  by  preaching  of  patience  or  of 
hope  and  by  every  other  means,  emollient  or  consolatory,  except 
the  one  thing  which  God  orders  for  them,  justice." — Poverty. 

12.  Critical  Acumen. — "  No  Englishman  that  we  know 
is  comparable  to  him  ...  for  the  vividness  and  value  of 
his  critique.  Lord  Lindsay,  who  made  the  history  of  art  a 
specialty,  is  not  more  minutely  acquainted  with  it  than  Rus- 
kin  is ;  nor  is  Mrs.  Jameson,  though  a  woman,  more  suscep- 
tible to  all  its  finer  poetical  feelings;  nor  is  Eastlake,  though 
President  of  the  Royal  Academy,  a  nicer  judge  of  its  technical 
excellence.  In  fact,  we  might  roll  a  great  many  critical 
'  single  gentlemen  '  into  one,  without  forming  a  compound 
equal  to  Ruskin.  .  .  .  The  appearance  of  '  Modern 
Painters,"  by  an  '  Oxford  Graduate,'  protesting  so  vehemently 
against  the  shallow  pedantries  of  the  magazine  writers,  and 
throwing  down  the  gauntlet  of  critical  combat  to  the  entire 
circle  of  on-lookers  with  such  lusty  disdain,  was  an  era  in  the 
history  of  British  criticism.  .  .  .  He  is  the  critic  rather 
than  the  philosopher  of  art.  ...  As  a  judge  he  is  posi- 
tive and  severe  but  also  enthusiastic.  His  praise  and  his 
blame  alike  come  from  the  heart." — Parke  Godwin. 

"  He  has  spent  half  a  lifetime  of  strenuous  if  fitful  labor 
on  the  study  and  analysis  of  artistic  phenomena,  of  which  he 
has  written  with  a  fire  and  an  earnestness  that  were  quite  new 
in  critical  literature.  ...  He  has  made  himself  one  of 
the  most  stringent  and  stirring  of  modern  critics  of  life,  at- 
taining in  that  function  to  an  intensity  if  not  a  breadth  of 
impressiveness  and  of  influence  reached  by  none  of  his  con- 
temporaries."— -J.  M.  Robertson. 
44 


6QO  RUSKIN 

"  Ruskin  is  a  critic  in  the  largest  and  best  sense  that  can 
be  given  to  that  word,  defining  him  as  one  who  points  out 
the  limitations  of  life  and  shows  the  way  to  what  is  higher 
and  better.  ...  In  this  sense  Ruskin  is  a  critic,  and 
one  of  the  most  noteworthy  which  this  century  has  produced 
in  England.  In  aim  he  has  been  noble,  in  theory  right,  in 
methods  sound.  That  which  is  capable  of  keeping  the  critic 
sound  in  judgment  and  sweet  in  temper  Ruskin  has :  a  pas- 
sionate love  of  nature  and  man.  ...  .  A  high  aim  and  a 
consistent  adherence  to  it  are  all  that  can  be  asked  of  the 
critic.  In  neither  direction  has  Ruskin  missed  the  highest  mark 
of  his  calling.  .  .  .  Ruskin  thoroughly  understands  the 
mission  of  the  true  critic.  He  has  had  a  high  and  just  stand- 
ard of  criticism,  a  distinct  and  worthy  conception  of  life  itself 
and  the  purpose  to  teach  men  a  lofty  ideal.  .  .  .  There 
are  times  when  the  critic  is  more  needed  than  the  poet,  and 
Ruskin  has  done  more  for  art  than  any  artist  the  time  has 
produced.  ...  A  new  mission  and  a  new  spirit  have 
come  to  criticism  as  Ruskin  has  dealt  with  it,  for  it  has  ceased 
to  be  literary  and  fastidious  and  come  to  be  one  with  life  and 
its  genuine  interests.  .  .  .  Ruskin's  chief  work  has  been 
done  as  a  critic  of  art." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"  Such  a  school  of  criticism  as  his  must,  in  the  very  nature 
of  things,  perpetuate  itself  and  correct  and  regulate  the  art 
criticism  of  the  future."—;/.  M.  Mather. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  regret  that  I  have  not  been  able,  as  yet,  to  examine  with 
care  the  powers  of  mind  involved  in  modern  caricature.  They 
are,  however,  always  partial  and  imperfect  ;  for  the  very  habit  of 
looking  for  the  leading  lines  by  the  smallest  possible  number  of 
which  the  expression  may  be  attained,  warps  the  power  of  general 
attention,  and  blunts  the  perception  of  the  delicacies  of  the  en- 
tire form  and  color.  Not  that  caricature,  or  exaggeration  of 
points  of  character,  may  not  be  occasionally  indulged  in  by  the 
greatest  men — as  constantly  by  Leonardo  ;  but  then  it  will  be 


KUSKIN  691 

found  that  the  caricature  consists,  not  in  imperfect  or  nolent 
drawing,  but  in  delicate  and  perfect  drawing  of  strange  and  ex- 
aggerated forms  quaintly  combined :  and  even  thus,  I  believe, 
the  habit  of  looking  for  such  conditions  will  be  found  injurious  ; 
I  strongly  suspect  its  operation  on  Leonardo  to  have  been  the  in- 
verse of  his  non-natural  tendencies  in  his  higher  works." — Mod- 
ern Painters. 

"  On  the  whole,  the  first  master  of  the  lower  picturesque  among 
our  living  artists  is  Clarkson  Stanfield  ;  his  range  of  art  being, 
indeed,  limited  by  his  pursuit  of  this  character.  I  take 
therefore  a  windmill,  forming  the  principal  subject  in  his 
drawing  of  Brittany,  near  Dol,  and  beside  it  I  place  a  windmill, 
which  forms  also  the  principal  subject  in  Turner's  study  of  the 
Lock,  in  the  "  Liber  Studiorum"  At  first  sight,  I  dare  say,  the 
reader  may  like  Stanfield's  best  ;  and  there  is,  indeed,  a  great 
deal  more  in  it  to  attract  liking.  Its  roof  is  nearly  as  interesting 
in  its  ruggedness  as  a  piece  of  the  stony  peak  of  a  mountain,  with 
a  chalet  built  on  its  side  ;  and  it  is  exquisitely  varied  in  swell 
and  curve.  Turner's  roof,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  plain,  ugly  gable, 
— a  windmill  roof,  and  nothing  more.  Stanfield's  sails  are  twisted 
into  most  effective  wrecks,  as  beautiful  as  pine  bridges  over  Al- 
pine streams  ;  only  they  do  not  look  as  if  they  had  ever  been  ser- 
viceable windmill  sails  ;  they  are  bent  about  in  cross  and  awkward 
ways,  as  if  they  were  warped  or  cramped  ;  and  their  timbers 
look  heavier  than  necessary.  Turner's  sails  have  no  beauty 
about  them  like  that  of  Alpine  bridges  ;  but  they  have  the  exact 
switchy  sway  of  the  sail  that  is  always  straining  against  the  wind  ; 
and  the  timbers  form  clearly  the  lightest  possible  framework  for 
the  canvas, — thus  showing  the  essence  of  windmill  sail.  Then 
the  clay  wall  of  Stanfield's  mill  is  as  beautiful  as  a  piece  of  chalk 
cliff,  all  worn  into  furrows  by  the  rain,  coated  with  mosses,  and 
rooted  to  the  ground  by  a  heap  of  crumbled  stone,  embroidered 
by  grass  and  creeping  plants.  But  this  is  not  a  serviceable  state 
for  a  windmill  to  be  in.  The  essence  of  a  windmill,  as  distin- 
guished from  all  other  mills,  is  that  it  should  turn  round  and  be 
a  spinning  thing,  ready  always  to  face  the  wind  ;  as  light,  there- 
fore, as  possible  and  as  vibratory  ;  so  that  it  is  in  no  wise  good 
for  it  to  approximate  itself  to  the  nature  of  chalk  cliffs." — Mod- 
ern Painters. 

11  Now,  observe,  that  passage   is   noble  primarily  because  it 


692  RUSKIN 

contains  the  utmost  number  that  will  come  together  into  the 
space  of  absolutely  just,  wise,  and  kind  thoughts.  But  it  is 
more  than  noble,  it  is  perfect,  because  the  quantity  it  holds  is  not 
artificially  or  intricately  concentrated,  but  with  the  serene  swift- 
ness of  a  smith's  hammer-strokes  on  hot  iron  ;  and  with  choice 
of  terms  which,  each  in  its  place,  will  convey  far  more  than  they 
mean  in  the  dictionary.  Thus,  '  however '  is  used  instead  of 
'  yet,'  because  it  stands  for  '  howsoever,'  or,  in  full,  for  '  yet  what- 
ever they  did.'  '  Thick '  of  society,  because  it  means,  not  merely 
the  crowd,  but  the  fog  of  it ;  '  ten  hundred  thousand '  instead 
of '  a  million '  or  '  a  thousand  thousand,'  to  take  the  sublimity 
out  of  the  number,  and  make  us  feel  that  it  is  a  number  of 
nobodies. " — Prceterita. 


IRVING,  1783-1859 

Biographical  Outline.— Washington  Irving,  born  in 
New  York  City,  April  3,  1783,  the  youngest  of  eleven  chil- 
dren ;  father  a  Scotchman,  who  began  life  as  a  sailor  and 
afterward  became  a  New  York  merchant ;  mother  the  grand- 
daughter of  an  English  curate ;  they  emigrate  to  New  York 
in  1763  ;  Irving  is  presented,  as  a  child,  to  General  Wash- 
ington, then  in  New  York,  after  whom  he  was  named  ;  he 
is  reared  as  a  strict  Scotch  Presbyterian  by  his  father,  who 
was  a  deacon  in  that  church,  but  the  severity  produces  a  re- 
action, and,  early  in  his  boyhood,  Irving  is  confirmed  as  an 
Episcopalian  at  Trinity  Church ;  he  develops  an  early  love 
for  the  drama ;  in  his  fourth  year  he  enters  the  school  of  Mrs. 
Kilmaster  in  Ann  Street,  where  he  spends  two  years  in  learn- 
ing the  alphabet ;  thence,  in  1789,  to  a  school  for  both  sexes, 
kept  by  Benjamin  Romaine,  where  Irving  remains  till  his 
fourteenth  year ;  he  is  an  omnivorous  reader  from  his  tenth 
year,  devouring  especially  books  of  travel,  fiction,  and  poetry ; 
writes  verses  as  a  child  ;  enters  a  law-office  at  sixteen,  appar- 
ently declining  the  opportunity  of  a  course  at  Columbia  Col- 
lege, such  as  had  been  given  to  his  brothers ;  reads  more 
literature  than  law,  and  begins  to  explore  the  lower  Hudson 
district,  which  he  was  to  make  classic ;  makes  his  first  trip 
up  the  Hudson  and  into  the  Mohawk  Valley  in  1802  ;  in  the 
same  year  he  enters  the  law- office  of  Josiah  Hoffman,  whose 
family  had  great  influence  on  Irving's  future  life  ;  because  of 
threatened  pulmonary  weakness,  he  spends  most  of  the  next 
few  years  travelling  in  the  Hudson  and  Mohawk  Valleys,  pene- 
trating as  far  north  as  Ogdensburg  and  Montreal,  and  stopping 

693 


694  IRVING 

to  enjoy  the  social  pleasures  offered  at  Albany,  Saratoga,  Ball- 
ston,  etc. ;  his  first  literary  publication  is  a  series  of  letters  in 
his  brother  Peter's  paper,  the  Morning  Chronicle,  consisting 
of  satires  on  the  current  local  drama,  etc. ,  in  the  style  of  the 
Spectator  and  Tatler ;  these  papers  foreshadow  his  ultimate 
humor,  sensibility,  and  tenderness;  by  1804  he  has  become 
so  consumptive  in  appearance  that  he  is  sent  abroad  by  his 
brothers ;  reaches  Bordeaux  in  June,  and  goes  thence,  after  a 
stay  of  six  weeks,  by  diligence  to  the  Mediterranean  ;  visits 
Avignon,  Marseilles,  and  Nice,  reaching  Genoa  in  October, 
where  he  remains  till  late  in  December;  in  Genoa  he  meets 
Lady  Shaftesbury,  who  gives  him  valuable  letters  of  introduc- 
tion ;  sets  out  for  Sicily  in  December,  the  packet  being 
seized  and  searched  by  pirates  en  route;  spends  two  months 
in  Sicily,  thence  goes  to  Naples,  and  reaches  Rome  in  March, 
1805,  where  he  begins  his  life-long  friendship  with  the  artist 
Washington  Allston  ;  makes  some  effort  to  become  a  landscape- 
painter,  but  abandons  the  attempt ;  meets  Baron  von  Hum- 
bold  t,  Madame  de  Stael,  and  other  notabilities ;  reaches  Paris 
in  May,  1805,  where  he  spends  four  months  studying  French 
and — the  theatre;  reaches  London  via  the  Netherlands  in 
October,  and  remains  there  till  January,  1806  ;  hears  Kemble, 
Cooke,  and  Mrs.  Siddons,  who  afterward  acknowledges  the 
power  of  Irving's  pathos ;  returning,  reaches  America  in 
February,  1806,  with  restored  health  but  with  no  taste  for 
continuing  legal  pursuits;  devotes  himself  mainly  to  society  ; 
with  his  brother  William  and  John  Paulding  he  issues  Sal- 
magundi, a  semi-monthly  duodecimo  periodical,  modelled  after 
the  Spectator,  which  runs  through  twenty  numbers;  he  be- 
comes slightly  interested  in  local  politics  in  1806,  and  fails  in 
an  attempt  to  secure  a  clerical  appointment  at  Albany  :  begins 
the  "Knickerbocker  History"  in  collaboration  with  his 
brother  Peter,  at  first  intending  it  simply  as  a  bit  of  local 
satire  on  "  The  Picture  of  New  York,"  a  somewhat  pedantic 
book  then  just  issued  ;  Peter  is  called  to  Europe,  and  Irving 


IRVING  695 

condenses  their  joint  work  into  the  first  six  chapters,  com- 
pletes the  work  on  a  new  plan,  and  publishes  the  complete 
"History"  in  1809;  meantime  his  fiancee,  Miss  Matilda 
Hoffman,  second  daughter  of  Irving's  law  preceptor,  between 
whom  and  himself  there  existed  a  most  ardent  attachment, 
dies  suddenly  in  her  eighteenth  year  ;  of  the  loss  Irving  wrote 
years  afterward,  "  It  threw  some  clouds  into  my  disposition 
which  have  ever  since  hung  about  it ;  "  the  "  Knickerbocker 
History  "  becomes  immediately  popular,  and  is  highly  praised 
by  Sir  Walter  Scott;  Irving  now  admits  having  "a  fatal 
propensity  to  belles  If  tires,"  but  continues  to  be  a  society 
man ;  he  makes  frequent  visits  to  Washington,  stopping  for 
the  social  gayeties  of  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore  and  making 
many  friends,  especially  "  Dolly,"  wife  of  President  Madi- 
son; during  1812  he  edits  a  periodical,  called  at  first  Select 
Reviews  and  afterward  the  Analectic  Magazine,  some  articles 
from  which  went,  eventually,  into  the  "Sketch  Book;" 
during  181 2  he  writes  also  a  brief  biography  of  the  poet  Camp- 
bell as  an  introduction  to  an  American  edition  of  "  Gertrude 
of  Wyoming;"  becomes  gradually  tired  of  "the  tedious 
commonplace  of  fashionable  society; "  in  March,  1812,  sells  a 
second  edition  of  the  "  Knickerbocker  History"  (1,500  copies) 
for  $1,200;  in  the  autumn  of  1814  he  enlists  and  becomes 
aid  and  secretary  to  Governor  Tompkins  of  New  York,  serv- 
ing till  the  close  of  the  war,  four  months  later;  in  May,  1815, 
he  embarks  for  a  short  visit  to  his  brother  Peter,  then  in  Eu- 
rope, but  remains  abroad  seventeen  years;  travels  through  mid- 
dle England  and  Wales,  and  spends  most  of  the  two  following 
years  at  Liverpool,  trying  vainly  to  bolster  up  the  declining 
hardware  importing  business  of  his  brothers,  one  of  whom 
(Peter)  was  then  an  invalid;  passes  most  of  the  year  in  ill- 
health  and  depression,  but  plans  the  "  Sketch  Book;  "  meets 
Byron,  Disraeli,  and  other  notabilities,  and  is  entertained  at 
Abbotsford  by  Sir  Walter  Scott ;  his  brothers  become  bankrupt 
early  in  1818,  and  Irving  determines  on  literature  as  a  profes- 


696  IRVING 

sion ;  he  refuses  a  proffered  clerkship  at  Washington,  declines 
the  editorship  of  an  anti-Jacobin  periodical  at  Edinburgh, 
proffered  by  Scott,  and  refuses  a  salary  of  a  thousand  guineas 
offered  him  by  Murray  to  become  editor  of  a  projected  new 
London  magazine ;  refuses  also  to  contribute  to  the  Quarterly 
at  the  rate  of  one  hundred  guineas  an  article  "  because  it  has 
always  been  so  hostile  to  my  country ; ' '  the  first  number  of  the 
"Sketch  Book"  is  published  in  America  in  May,  1819,  and 
the  last  number  in  September,  1820  ;  it  wins  immediate  popu- 
larity in  both  America  and  England;  Irving  feels  "  almost 
appalled  by  such  success,"  and  declares,  "  I  have  attempted 
no  lofty  theme.  ...  I  have  preferred  addressing  my- 
self to  the  feelings  and  fancy  of  the  reader  rather  than  to 
his  judgment;"  piracy  compels  the  republication  of  the 
"Sketch  Book"  in  England;  Murray  at  first  refuses  it, 
and  Irving  publishes  it  on  his  own  responsibility  ;  Murray 
afterward  buys  the  copyright  for  £200 ;  Irving  becomes 
a  social  "lion"  in  London,  and  enters  into  cordial  rela- 
tions with  Southey,  Campbell,  Hallam,  Gifford,  Rogers, 
Scott,  and  other  notabilities;  visits  Paris  in  1820,  where  he 
forms  a  lasting  friendship  with  Moore;  the  "  Sketch  Book  " 
(published  over  the  pseudonym  of  Geoffrey  Crayon)  is  highly 
praised  by  the  Scotch  reviews,  by  Byron,  and  others,  and 
is  attributed  to  Scott;  Irving  returns  to  England  in  1821, 
visits  various  watering-places,  seeking  relief  from  an  eruptive 
malady  in  his  ankles,  and  publishes  "  Bracebridge  Hall ;  "  in 
1822  he  visits  Germany,  spending  some  time  in  Dresden, 
where  all,  including  royalty,  unite  to  do  him  honor ;  he  re- 
turns to  Paris  in  July,  1853  ;  writes  only  at  rare  intervals,  but 
then  with  great  rapidity  and  facility;  publishes  "Tales  of  a 
Traveller"  in  1824;  in  February,  1824,  settles  at  Madrid, 
and  begins  work  on  his  "Life  of  Columbus;"  publishes 
"The  Life  of  Columbus"  in  February,  1828,  receiving  from 
Murray  ,£3,150  for  the  copyright;  publishes  "The  Chroni- 
cle of  the  Conquest  of  Granada ' '  soon  afterward,  receiving 


IRVING  697 

^£2,000  for  the  manuscript ;  in  1829  he  is  unexpectedly  ap- 
pointed Secretary  of  Legation  at  London,  and  returns  thither 
in  April,  1830;  in  1831  he  receives  a  gold  medal  from  the 
Royal  Society  of  Literature  and  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  from 
Oxford;  resigns  his  secretaryship  in  September,  1831,  and 
returns  to  New  York  in  May,  1832,  where  he  is  received  with 
great  popular  ovations ;  is  called  upon  to  support  his  two 
brothers  and  several  nieces ;  invests  his  savings  in  Western 
"paper  towns,"  an  investment  "as  permanent  as  it  was  un- 
remunerative ;  "  visits  the  far  West  and  South,  passing  up  the 
Arkansas  River,  and  publishes  "  A  Tour  on  the  Prairies;  "  in 
1832  he  purchases  a  small  farm  on  the  Hudson,  near  Tarry- 
town,  improves  the  old  Dutch  stone  cottage,  names  it  "  Sun- 
nyside,"  and  settles  there  in  1832  ;  in  1838  he  is  living 
there  "with  Ebenezer's  five  girls,  sister  Catherine  and  her 
daughter,"  and  other  dependent  relatives ;  he  entertains 
Louis  Napoleon,  then  an  obscure  French  nobleman,  at  Sun- 
nyside  in  1837  ;  declines  a  seat  in  Van  Buren's  Cabinet  as 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  ;  becomes  editor  of  the  Knickerbocker 
Magazine  in  1839  at  a  salary  of  $2,000  ;  attempts  to  se- 
cure an  act  of  Congress  establishing  international  copyright; 
published  "Recollections  of  Abbotsford  "  and  "  Newstead 
Abbey  "  in  1835,  "  The  Legends  of  the  Conquest  of  Spain  " 
in  1835,  "Astoria"  (largely  the  work  of  his  nephew,  Pierre 
Irving)  in  1837,  the  "Life  of  Goldsmith"  in  1846,  and 
"  Mahomet  and  his  Successors  "  in  1849  ;  he  collects  his  essays 
in  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  and  publishes  them  under  the 
title  "  Wolfert's  Roost "  in  1855;  publishes  "The  Life  of 
Washington"  also  in  1855-59;  abandons,  in  favor  of  W. 
H.  Prescott,  his  life-long  project  of  writing  a  history  of  the 
conquest  of  Mexico  (without  Prescott's  knowledge,  though 
Irving  had  already  collected  much  more  material  than  had 
Prescott)  ;  is  appointed  Minister  to  Spain  in  1842,  at  the 
suggestion  of  Daniel  Webster,  and  is  confirmed  by  acclama- 
tion ;  he  fulfils  the  duties  of  minister  satisfactorily  in  a  time 


698  IRVING 

of  great  civil  disturbance  in  Spain ;  he  visits  Paris  and 
London  briefly,  assists  in  settling  the  Oregon  boundary  dis- 
pute, and  is  recalled  from  Madrid  in  1846;  reaches  Sunnyside 
in  September,  1846,  and  continues  to  labor  assiduously  at  his 
"  Life  of  Washington  ;  "  his  works  are  "  out  of  print  "  from 
1842  to  1848  ;  they  are  reissued  in  1848  by  George  Putnam, 
and  from  1848  to  1859  Irving  receives  §88,000  for  his  copy- 
rights ;  he  dies  at  Sunnyside,  November  28,  1859. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON    IRVING'S   STYLE. 

Warren,    C.    D. ,    "The  Works  of  Washington    Irving."     New  York, 

1894,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  190-304. 
Wallace,    H.  B.,    "Literary  Criticism."     Philadelphia,   1856,    Parry  & 

Macmillan,  67-91. 
Everett,  E.,  "  Orations  and  Speeches. "     Boston,  1872,  Little,   Brown  & 

Co.,  248-262. 
Haweis,  H.  R.,  "American  Humorists."     London,  1883,  Chatto  &  Win- 

dus,  3-36. 
Bungay,  G.  W,  "  Off -Hand  Takings."     New  York,    1854,   DeWitt  & 

Co.,  141-147. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."    New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

i:   258-281. 
Whipple,    E.    P.,     "American   Literature."     Boston,     1887,     Ticknor, 

36-39 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "  Fable  for  Critics  "  (Poetical  Works).     New  York,  1891, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  2:   78-79. 
Hill,  D.  J.,  "  Life  of  Irving."     New  York,  1849,  Sheldon  &  Co.,  203- 

228. 
Warner,  C.  D.,  "  American  Men  of  Letters."     Boston,  1881,  Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  190-304. 
Putnam,  G.  P.,  "Personal  Reminiscences."     New  York,  1880,  Putnam, 

128-170. 
Warner,  Bryant,  Etc.,  "  Irving,  his  Life,  Character,  and  Genius."     New 

York,  1880,  Putnam,  77-128. 
Tuckerman,  H.  T.,  "Mental  Portraits."     London,    1853,  Bentley,  339- 

362. 

Dowden,  E.,  "Studies  in  Literature."     London,  1878,   Kegan  Paul  & 

Co.,  470. 
Jeffrey,  F.,  "Modern  British  Essayists."     Philadelphia,  1852,  A.  Hart, 

6:  637-643. 


IRVING  699 

Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1884, 

Griggs,  2:   303-307. 
Willis,  N.  P.,  "  Hurrygraphs."     Auburn,    New  York,    1853,    Alden  & 

Co.,  256-257. 
Dana,   R.  H.,  "Poems  and  Prose  Writings. "     New  York,  1850,  Scrib- 

ner,  3-16. 
Tuckerman,  H.  T.,    "America  and  Her  Commentators."     New  York, 

1864,  Scribner,  422-424. 
Russell,  W.  C.,  "The  Book  of  Authors. "     London,  n.  d.,  Warne,  281, 

313,  425,  and  466. 
Shaw,  T.  B.,  "A  Manual  of   English    Literature."     New  York,    1881, 

Sheldon,  497-501. 
Underwood,   F.    H.,  "  Hand    Book   of   English    Literature."     Boston, 

1873,  Lee  &  Shepard,  92-94. 
Irving,  P.  M.,  "Life  and  Letters  of  Washington   Irving."     New  York, 

n.  d.,  Putnam,  three  volumes,  v.  index. 
Hazlitt,  William,   "  The  Spirit  of  the  Age. "     New  York,  1894,  Putnam, 

333-340- 
Cleveland,  C.  D.,  "Compendium  of  English   Literature."     New  York, 

n.  d.,  Barnes,  274-275. 
Beers,  H.  A.,  "Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters."     New  York,  1891, 

Chautauqua  Publishing  Co. 
Nicoll,  J.,  "American  Literature."    Edinburgh,  1885,  Adam  &  Charles 

Black,  170-175. 
Hawthorne  and  Lemon,  "  American  Literature. "     Boston,  1891,  Heath, 

38-46. 

"  Irvingiana. "     New  York,  1860,  C.  D.  Richardson,  1-63. 
Harper's   Magazine,     20:     542-545    (Thackeray);     24:     349-356    (J. 

Wynne);   52:  412-413  (Whipple);  66:   790-791  (G.  W.  Curtis). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  13:   694-701  (D.  G.  Mitchell). 
Scribner's  Monthly,  ii:   799-808  (G.  P.  Lathrop). 
T/ie  Xation,  36:   291-292  (A.  G.  Sedgwick). 

North  American  Review,  9 :   322-356  (R.  H.  Dana)  ;  41 :    1-28  (E.  Ev- 
erett) ;  86  :  330-358  (G.  W.  Green) ;  69  :  175-196  (E.  Bryant) ;  15  : 

204-224;  29:   293-314  (Editor) ;   28:    103-134  (A.  H.  Everett). 
Christian  Examiner,  73:  602-616  (J.  B.  C.) ;  43:   271-283  (Pierre  M. 

Irving). 

Methodist  Quarterly,  16 :   537-549  (R.  Allyn). 
Democratic  Review,  9:    593-597  ;    21:   488-494. 
Eclectic  Magazine,  29 :   155-162;   64:  497-501;   34:    546-573. 
Quarterly  Review,  25:   50-67  (Irving);    114:    151-179  (P.  M.   Irving); 

31 :  473-487- 


700  IRVING 

National  Magazine,  I  :  444-445  (Philarete  Chasles). 
Blackwood's  Alagazine,  6:   556-561;   7:   360-369. 
The  Century  Magazine,  12:   53-58  (C.   Cook). 
Fraser's  Magazine,  ^:  435;    12:   409-415. 
Edinburgh  Review,  37 :  337~35°  (F-  Jeffrey). 
Colbuni's  Magazine,  118:   213-221  (C.   Redding). 
Bentleys  Miscellany,  19:   622-623. 

7mA  Quarterly  Review,  8  :   915-926  (H.  T.  Tuckerman). 
LittelVs  Living  Age,  74:   579-581  (Spectator). 


PARTICULAR    CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Serenity — Mildness— Dreaminess. — "  If  I  want 
at  any  moment  to  transport  myself  into  a  calm  and  restful 
time,  I  can  do  it  by  taking  up  Irving.  .  .  .  Irving's 
books  are  quite  free  from  the  unrest  of  these  times,  and  there 
is  a  total  absence  in  them  of  the  intellectual  strain  which  has 
characterized  nearly  all  the  writings  of  the  past  thirty  years. 
He  never  caught  the  restlessness  of  this  century. 
.  .  .  His  placid,  retrospective,  optimistic  strain  pleased 
a  public  that  were  excited  and  harrowed  by  the  mocking  and 
lamenting  of  Byron.  .  .  .  There  is  no  visible  straining 
to  attract  attention.  .  .  .  He  seems  always  writing  from 
an  internal  calm,  which  is  the  necessary  condition  of  his  pro- 
duction. ...  To  the  last  he  basked  in  the  sun  and 
radiated  cheerfulness  all  about  him.  .  .  .  His  writings 
induce  to  reflection,  to  quiet  musing,  to  tenderness  for  tradi- 
tion ;  they  amuse,  they  entertain,  they  call  a  check  to  the 
feverishness  of  modern  life ;  but  they  are  rarely  stimulating 
or  suggestive." — Charles  Dudley  Warner. 

"  By  temperament  and  cast  of  mind  he  was  ordained  to 
be  a  gentle  minister  at  the  altar  of  literature.  .  .  .  Since 
his  advent  as  a  writer  an  intense  style  has  come  into  vogue  ; 
glowing  rhetoric,  bold  verbal  tactics,  and  a  more  powerful 
exercise  of  thought  characterize  many  popular  authors  of 
the  day.  .  .  .  But  .  .  .  -as  we  look  forth  on  the 


IRVING  701 

calm  and  picturesque  landscape  which  environs  him,  we  are 
content  that  no  fierce  polemic,  visionary  philanthropist,  or 
rabid  sentimentalist  has  thus  linked  his  name  with  the  tran- 
quil beauties  of  the  scene.  ...  He  infuses  .  .  . 
the  sportiveness  of  fancy  into  his  creations,  and  thus  yields 
genuine  refreshment  and  a  needed  lesson  to  the  fevered  minds 
of  his  countrymen.  No  contrast,  indeed,  can  be  more  entire 
than  that  between  the  Dutch  passivity  he  loves  to  delineate, 
the  indolent  humor  which  gives  such  zest  to  his  sketches,  and 
the  Yankee  enterprise  which  overlays  the  scene  of  his  inven- 
tions."— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  The  earth  seems  to  be  reeling  under  our  feet,  and  we  turn 
to  those  who  write  like  Irving  for  some  assurance  that  we  are 
still  in  the  same  world  into  which  we  were  born  ;  we  read  and 
are  quieted  and  consoled." — G.  P.  Putnam. 

"  He  easily  surpassed  Charles  Lamb  in  evenness  of  execu- 
tion. Behind  all  that  he  did  appeared  his  own  serene,  happy, 
and  well-balanced  character." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  We  come  from  reading  '  Rural  Life  in  England  '  as  much 
restored  and  as  cheerful  as  if  we  had  been  passing  an  hour  or  two 
in  the  very  fields  and  woods  themselves.  Mr.  Irving's  scenery 
is  so  perfectly  true — so  full  of  little  beautiful  particulars,  so 
varied,  yet  so  connected  in  character  that  the  distant  is  brought 
nigh  to  us,  and  the  whole  is  seen  and  felt  like  a  delightful 
reality.  It  is  all  gentleness  and  sunshine.  The  bright  and 
lively  influences  of  nature  fall  on  us,  and  our  disturbed  and 
lowering  spirit  is  made  clear  and  tranquil — turned  all  to 
beauty,  like  clouds  shone  on  by  the  sun." — J?.  H.  Dana. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  is  a  pleasing  sight,  of  a  Sunday  morning,  when  the  bell 
is  sending  its  sober  melody  across  the  quiet  fields,  to  behold 
peasantry  in  their  best  finery,  with  ruddy  faces  and  mod- 
est cheerfulness,  thronging  tranquilly  along  the  green  lanes  to 
church  ;  but  it  is  still  more  pleasing  to  see  them  in  the  evenings 


7O2  IRVING 

gathering  about  their  cottage  doors  and  appearing  to  exult  in  the 
humble  comforts  and  embellishments  which  their  own  hands 
have  spread  around  them.  It  is  this  sweet  home-feeling,  this 
settled  repose  of  affection  in  the  domestic  scene,  that  is,  after 
all,  the  parent  of  the  steadiest  virtues  and  purest  enjoyments." 
— Rural  Life  in  England. 

"  Though  there  may  be  something  whimsical  in  all  this,  yet 
I  confess  that  I  cannot  look  upon  John's  [John  Bull]  situation 
without  strong  feelings  of  interest.  With  all  his  odd  humours 
and  obstinate  prejudices,  he  is  a  stetling-hearted  old  blade.  He 
may  not  be  so  wonderfully  fine  a  fellow  as  he  thinks  himself,  but 
he  is,  at  least,  twice  as  good  as  his  neighbors  represent  him." 
— Sketch  Book. 

'*  I  would  place  implicit  confidence  in  an  Englishman's  de- 
scription of  the  regions  beyond  the  cataracts  of  the  Nile;  of  un- 
known islands  in  the  Yellow  Sea ;  of  the  interior  of  India  ;  or  of 
any  other  tract  which  other  travellers  might  be  apt  to  picture  out 
with  the  illusions  of  their  fancies.  But  I  would  cautiously  receive 
his  account  of  his  immediate  neighbors  and  of  those  nations  with 
which  he  is  in  habits  of  most  frequent  intercourse.  However  I 
might  be  disposed  to  trust  his  probity,  I  dare  not  trust  his  prej- 
udices."— English  Writers  on  America. 


2.  Ease — Quiet  Grace. — Irving  has  been  called  the 
American  Addison.  In  one  quality  he  more  closely  resem- 
bles Steele,  and  that  is  the  quiet,  colloquial  ease  everywhere 
apparent.  Irving  was  in  no  sense  a  partisan.  He  disliked 
conflict,  and  his  sensitive  soul  shrank  from  the  aggressive 
forms  of  composition  in  which  men  like  Carlyle  delight. 

"This  easy-going  gentleman,  with  his  winning  mildness 
and  quiet  deliberation — as  if  he  never  could  and  never  did 
and  never  would  knuckle  down  to  hard  task-work.  .  .  . 
He  had  the  manner  of  a  lazy  observer  of  life  ...  his 
apparent  lazy  and  really  acute  observations  of  life. 
He  had  neither  the  power  nor  the  disposition  to  cut  his  way 
transversely  across  popular  opinion  and  prejudice  that  Ruskin 
has." — Charles  Dudley  Warner. 


IRVING  703 

"Grace  is  an  electric  light  evolved  by  the  action  of  suc- 
cessive parts  of  the  subject  on  the  mind.  It  is  the  source  of 
that  fresh  and  delightful  fragrance  which  always  exhales  from 
Irving's  writings.  .  .  .  The  pleasantness  which  he  dif- 
fuses over  subjects  the  most  barren  .  .  .  arises  chiefly 
from  the  instinctive  quietness  with  which  he  seizes  everything. 
The  art  of  this  system  consists  in  the  gentleness  and 
fineness  of  the  rays.  .  .  .  Looking  only  at  the  style  and 
manner  of  his  works,  we  find  a  grace  as  inherent  as  that  of 
childhood  ;  a  gentle  gayety  as  variable  yet  as  unfailing  and  as 
unfatiguing  as  the  breezes  of  June ;  an  indestructible  presence 
of  good  taste,  simplicity,  and  ease.  .  .  .  What  renders 
the  merit  more  singular  in  Irving  is  that,  successful  and  in- 
imitable as  the  charm  is,  it  is  obviously  not  spontaneous  or 
unconscious." — H.  B.  Wallace. 

"  It  [the  name  of  Irving]  is  the  synonym  of  a  sweet  liter- 
ary grace  and  a  harmless  gayety  of  humor  which  retain  their 
charm  in  the  midst  of  new  tastes  and  among  powerful  rivals." 
— George  William  Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  was  I  to  do  to  pass  away  the  long-lived  day  ?  I  was 
sadly  nervous  and  lonely  ;  and  everything  about  an  inn  seemed 
calculated  to  make  a  dull  day  ten  times  duller.  Old  newspapers, 
smelling  of  beer  and  tobacco  smoke,  and  which  I  had  already 
read  half  a  dozen  times  —  good-for-nothing  books,  that  were 
worse  than  rainy  weather.  I  bored  myself  to  death  with  an  old 
volume  of  the  Lady's  Magazine.  I  read  all  the  commonplace 
names  of  ambitious  travellers  scrawled  on  the  panes  of  glass  ;  the 
eternal  families  of  the  Smiths  and  the  Browns  and  the  Jacksons 
and  the  Johnsons  and  all  the  other  sons  ;  and  I  deciphered  several 
scraps  of  inn-window  poetry  which  I  have  met  with  in  all  parts  of 
the  world."—  The  Stout  Gentleman. 

"  As  I  am  too  civil  not  to  agree  with  the  ladies  on  all  occasions, 
I  have  committed  myself  most  horribly  with  both  parties  by  abus- 
ing their  opponents.  I  might  manage  to  reconcile  this  to  my 
conscience,  which  is  a  truly  accommodating  one,  but  I  cannot 


704  IRVING 

to  my  apprehensions — if  the  Lambs  and  Trotters  ever  come  to  a 
reconciliation  and  compare  notes,  I  am  ruined ;  T  have  deter- 
mined, therefore,  to  beat  a  retreat  in  time,  and  am  actually  look- 
ing out  for  some  other  nest  in  this  great  city,  where  old  English 
manners  are  still  kept  up  ;  where  French  is  neither  eaten,  drank, 
danced,  nor  spoken.  This  found,  I  will,  like  a  veteran  rat,  hast- 
en away  before  I  have  an  old  house  about  my  ears  and  leave  the 
Lambs  and  the  Trotters  to  divide  the  distracted  empire  of  Little 
Britain." — Little  Britain, 

"  To  a  homeless  man,  who  has  no  spot  on  this  wide  world  which 
he  can  truly  call  his  own,  there  is  a  momentary  feeling  of  some- 
thing like  independence  and  territorial  consequence  when,  after 
a  weary  day's  travel,  he  kicks  off  his  boots,  thrusts  his  feet  into 
his  slippers,  and  stretches  himself  before  an  inn  fire.  Let  the 
world  go  as  it  may  ;  let  kingdoms  rise  or  fall ;  so  long  as  he  has 
the  wherewithal  to  pay  his  bill,  he  is,  for  the  time  being,  the  very 
monarch  of  all  he  surveys.  The  arm-chair  is  his  throne,  the 
poker  his  sceptre,  and  the  little  parlour,  of  some  twelve  feet 
square,  his  undisputed  empire.  It  is  a  morsel  of  certainty 
snatched  from  the  midst  of  the  uncertainties  of  life,  it  is  a  sunny 
moment  gleaming  out  of  a  cloudy  day.  Shall  I  not  take  mine  ease 
in  mine  inn  ?  thought  I,  as  I  gave  the  fire  a  stir,  lolled  back  in 
my  elbow-chair,  and  cast  a  complacent  look  about  the  little  par- 
lour of  the  Red  Horse  at  Stratford-on-Avon." — Sketch  Book. 

"There  was  a  gentle  tap  at  the  door,  and  a  pretty  chamber- 
maid, putting  in  her  smiling  face,  inquired  with  a  hesitating  air 
whether  I  had  rung.  I  understood  it  as  a  modest  hint  that  it  was 
time  to  retire.  My  dream  of  absolute  dominion  was  at  an  end  ; 
so,  abdicating  my  throne,  like  a  prudent  potentate,  to  avoid  being 
deposed,  and  putting  the  Stratford  guide-book  under  my  arm,  as 
a  pillow  companion,  I  went  to  bed,  and  dreamt  all  night  of  Shake- 
speare, the  jubilee,  and  David  Garrick." — Stratford-on-Avon. 

3.  Spontaneous  Humor. — Irving  is  the  prince  of 
American  humorists  ;  his  humor  is  unlike  that  of  any  other 
writer.  In  reading  the  works  of  other  humorists,  you  are  fre- 
quently conscious  of  a  strained  effect ;  the  author  seems  to  be 
making  an  effort  to  be  funny.  In  Irving  this  rarely,  if  ever, 
appears.  He  seems  to  make  us  laugh  because  he  cannot  help 


IRVING  705 

it ;  and,  consequently,  one  may  read  his  lighter  works  again 
and  again  without  any  perception  of  weakness  or  staleness. 

"  Irving's  gift  was  humor  ;  and  allied  to  this  was  senti- 
ment. He  acquired  other  powers  which  he  himself  may  have 
valued  more  highly  and  which  brought  him  more  substantial 
honors  ;  but  the  historical  compositions  which  he  and  his 
contemporaries  regarded  as  a  solid  basis  of  fame  could  be 
spared  without  serious  loss,  while  the  works  of  humor,  the 
first  fruits  of  his  genius,  are  possessions  in  English  literature 
the  loss  of  which  would  be  irreparable.  .  .  .  The 
[Knickerbocker]  History  was  hailed  with  delight  as  the  most 
witty  and  original  production  from  any  American  pen.  The 
first  foreign  critic  was  Scott,  who  read  it  aloud  in  his  family 
till  their  sides  were  sore  with  laughing.  Of  its  humor  one  is 
tempted  to  use  the  words  grotesque  and  gigantic.  .  .  . 
I  take  it  that  no  one  would  care  to  undertake  to  mend  it  or 
to  disturb  in  any  way  the  richest  piece  of  native  humor  that 
the  country  has  produced." — Charles  Dudley  Warner. 

"It  is  the  genial  coloring  of  his  humorous  conceptions, 
not  their  mechanism  that  wins  our  interest.  He  often  makes 
us  smile,  but  seldom  elicits  a  broad  guffaw — for  his  concep- 
tions are  charged  with  a  feeling  softened  by  culture  and  tem- 
pered by  geniality." — D.  J.  Hill. 

"  When  I  compare  it  ['  History  of  New  York ']  with  other 
works  of  wit  and  humor  of  a  similar  length,  I  find  that,  unlike 
most  of  them,  it  carries  forward  the  reader  to  the  conclusion 
without  weariness  or  satiety,  so  unsought,  spontaneous,  self- 
suggested  are  the  wit  and  humor.  The  author  makes  us 
laugh  because  he  can  no  more  help  it  than  we  can  help  laugh- 
ing. .  .  .  His  humor  not  only  tinged  his  writings,  but 
overflowed  in  his  delightful  conversation.  Its  ['  Salma- 
gundi's ']  gayety  is  its  own  ;  its  style  of  humor  is  not  that  of 
Addison  nor  of  Goldsmith,  though  it  has  all  the  genial  spirit 
of  theirs.  .  .  .  It  is  far  more  frolicsome  and  joyous,  yet 
tempered  by  a  mature  gracefulness. "  —Bryant. 
45 


706  IRVING 

"  In  the  class  of  compositions  to  which  it  ['  Knickerbocker 
History ']  belongs,  I  know  of  nothing  happier  than  this  work 
in  our  language.  It  at  once  placed  Mr.  Irving  at  the  head  of 
American  humorists." — Edward  Everett. 

"  He  had  the  singular  fortune  to  write  before  all  the  good 
jokes  had  been  made.      ...     In  him  indeed  are  the  germs 
of  an  American  humor  since  run  to  seed  in  buffoonery,  but 
he  is  never  outrageous — always  within  delicate  bounds. "- 
H.  R.  Haweis. 

"  Scarce  ever  a  page  anywhere  but  on  a  sudden  some  shim- 
mer of  buoyant  humor  breaks  through  all  the  crevices  of  a 
sentence — a  humor  not  born  of  rhetoric  or  measurable  by 
critic's  rules,  but  coming  as  the  winds  come,  and  playing  up 
and  down  with  a  frolicsome,  mischievous  blaze  that  warms 
and  piques  and  delights  us." — Donald  G.  Mitchell. 

"  We  smile  habitually,  and  with  the  same  zest,  at  the  idea 
of  the  Trumpeter's  rubicund  proboscis  .  .  .  and  the  fig- 
ure which  the  pedagogue  cuts  on  the  dorsal  ridge  of  old  Gun- 
powder."— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  living's  '  History  of  New  York  '  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
unique,  perfectly  rounded,  and  elaborately  sustained  bur- 
lesque in  our  literature.  It  has  enough  of  sober  history  to 
ballast  it,  and  its  ludicrous  incidents  and  studies  of  the  whim- 
sical traits  of  Dutch  character  are  painted  with  a  grave  air  of 
verity  that  keeps  the  reader  in  a  perpetual  but  never  tiresome 
chuckle.  .  .  .  The  vivacity  of  his  youth  never  wholly 
deserted  him  ;  although  he  ceased  writing  humorous  works,  it 
served  to  animate  his  graver  histories  and  to  give  them  a 
charm  which  the  mere  annalist  could  not  attain." — F.  H. 
Underwood. 

"  He  produced  at  the  age  of  twenty-six  the  most  deliciously 
audacious  work  of  humor  in  our  literature." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  His  range  was  wide,  covering  essay,  fiction,  history,  etc. 
.  ;  now  he  was  tenderly  pathetic,  now  broadly  humor- 
ous. The  Hudson  stories  in  the  '  Sketch  Book  ' 


IRVING  /O/ 

combine  nearly  every  merit  that  can  be  found  or  wished  in  a 
tale  of  humor. " — C.  F.  Richardson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  rival  oracle  of  Little  Britain  is  a  substantial  cheesemon- 
ger, who  lives  in  a  fragment  of  one  of  the  old  family  mansions, 
and  is  as  magnificently  lodged  as  a  round-bellied  mite  in  the 
midst  of  one  of  his  own  Cheshires.  Indeed,  he  is  a  man  of 
no  little  standing  and  importance  ;  and  his  renown  extends 
through  Huggin  Lane  and  Lad  Lane  and  even  unto  Alderman- 
bury.  His  opinion  is  very  much  taken  in  affairs  of  state,  having 
read  the  Sunday  papers  for  the  last  half  century,  together  with 
the  Gcntltmaris  Magazine,  Rapin's  'History  of  England,' 
and  the  '  Naval  Chronicle.'  His  head  is  stored  with  invaluable 
maxims  which  have  borne  the  test  of  time  and  use  for  centuries. 
It  is  his  firm  opinion  that  '  it  is  a  moral  impossible,'  so  long  as 
England  is  true  to  herself,  that  anything  can  shake  her  ;  and  he 
has  much  to  say  on  the  subject  of  the  national  debt  ;  which, 
somehow  or  other,  he  proves  to  be  a  great  national  bulwark  and 
blessing." — Little  Britain. 

"  He  likewise  prohibited  the  seamen  from  wearing  more  than 
five  jackets  and  six  pair  of  breeches  under  pretence  of  rendering 
them  more  alert.  .  .  .  The  parties  broke  up  without  noise 
and  without  confusion.  They  were  carried  by  their  own  carriages, 
that  is  to  say,  by  the  vehicles  nature  had  provided  them,  except- 
ing such  of  the  wealthy  as  could  afford  to  keep  a  wagon.  The 
gentlemen  gallantly  attended  their  fair  ones  to  their  respective 
abodes,  and  took  leave  of  them  with  a  hearty  smack  at  the  door  ; 
which,  as  it  was  an  established  piece  of  etiquette,  done  in  per- 
fect simplicity  and  honesty  of  heart,  occasioned  no  scandal  at 
that  time,  nor  should  it  at  the  present  —  if  our  great-grand- 
fathers approved  of  the  custom,  it  would  argue  a  great  want  of 
reverence  in  their  descendants  to  say  a  word  against  it." — His- 
tory of  New  York. 

11 '  Now  had  the  Dutchmen  snatched  a  huge  repast,'  and  find- 
ing themselves  wonderfully  encouraged  and  animated  thereby, 
prepared  to  take  the  field.  Expectation,  says  the  writer  of  the 
Stuyvesant  manuscript — expectation  now  stood  on  stilts.  The 
world  forgot  to  turn  round,  or  rather  stood  still,  that  it  might 


708  IRVING 

witness  the  affray  ;  like  a  fat  round-bellied  alderman,  watching 
the  combat  of  two  chivalric  flies  upon  his  jerkin.  The  eyes  of 
all  mankind,  as  usual  in  such  cases,  were  turned  upon  Fort 
Christina.  The  sun,  like  a  little  man  in  a  crowd  at  a  puppet 
show,  scampered  about  the  heavens,  popping  his  head  here  and 
there  and  endeavoring  to  get  a  peep  between  the  unmannerly 
clouds  that  obtruded  themselves  in  his  way.  The  historians 
filled  their  ink-horns — the  poets  went  without  their  dinners, 
either  that  they  might  buy  paper  and  goose-quills  or  because 
they  could  not  get  anything  to  eat — antiquity  scowled  sulkily  out 
of  his  grave  to  see  itself  outdone— while  even  posterity  stood 
mute,  gazing  in  gaping  ecstasy  of  retrospection  on  the  eventful 
field."— History  of  New  York. 

4.  Tenderness — Sympathy — Deep  Pathos.— "Irv- 
ing's  method  is  the  sympathetic  rather  than  the  precise  or  the 
philosophic.  The  '  Sketch  Book,'  especially,  abounds  in  seri- 
ous, tender,  meditative  passages.  And  in  all  his  works  you 
are  made  to  feel,  with  Bryant,  that  '  the  author  loved  good 
women  and  little  children  and  a  pure  life  ; '  he  had  faith  in  his 
fellow-men,  a  kindly  sympathy  with  the  lowest,  without  any 
subservience  to  the  highest.  His  heart  caught  and  reflected 
every  phase  of  humanity.  .  .  .  He  shed  over  all  the 
merry  atmosphere  of  a  kindly  heart." — Lowell. 

"  If  Irving  could  enjoy  wit  and  humor,  .  .  .  no  other 
writer  of  books  had  a  heart  more  tenderly  sensitive  than  his 
to  the  ills  and  sufferings  which  flesh  is  heir  to." — G.  P.  Put- 
nam. 

"  Concerning  his  '  Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  he  tells  us, 
indeed,  with  commendable  honesty  of  his  new  appetite  for  de- 
struction which  the  game  of  the  prairies  excited  ;  but  we  can- 
not fear  for  the  tenderness  of  a  heart  that  sympathizes  so 
readily  with  suffering  and  yields  so  gracefully  to  kindly  im- 
pulses."—-/f.  T.  Tuckerman. 


IRVING  709 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  She  had  made  an  effort  to  put  on  something  like  mourning 
for  her  son  ;  and  nothing  could  be  more  touching  than  this  strug- 
gle between  pious  affection  and  utter  poverty ;  a  riband  or  so — 
a  faded  black  handkerchief — and  one  or  two  more  such  humble 
attempts  to  express  by  outward  signs  that  grief  which  passes 
show.  When  I  looked  round  upon  the  storied  monuments,  the 
stately  hatchments,  the  cold  marble  pomp,  with  which  grandeur 
mourned  magnificently  over  departed  pride,  and  turned  to  this 
poor  widow,  bowed  down  with  age  and  sorrow  at  the  altar  of 
her  God,  and  offering  up  the  prayers  and  praises  of  a  pious 
though  a  broken  heart,  I  felt  that  this  living  monument  of  real 
grief  was  worth  them  all." —  The  Widow  and  Her  Son. 

"  If  thou  art  a  child  and  hast  ever  added  a  sorrow  to  the  soul 
or  a  furrow  to  the  silvered  brow  of  an  affectionate  parent  ;  if  thou 
art  a  husband,  and  hast  ever  caused  the  fond  bosom  that  vent- 
ured its  whole  happiness  in  thy  arms  to  doubt  one  moment  of 
thy  kindness  or  thy  truth  ;  if  thou  art  a  friend,  and  hast  ever 
wronged,  in  thought,  or  word,  or  deed,  the  spirit  that  generously 
confided  in  thee  ;  if  thou  art  a  lover,  and  hast  ever  given  one  un- 
merited pang  to  that  true  heart  that  now  lies  cold  and  still  beneath 
thy  feet  ;  then  be  sure  that  every  unkind  look,  every  ungracious 
word,  every  ungentle  action,  will  come  thronging  back  upon  thy 
memory  and  knocking  dolefully  at  thy  soul.  Then  be  sure  that 
thou  wilt  lie  down  sorrosving  and  repentant  on  the  grave,  and 
utter  the  unheard  groan  and  pour  the  unavailing  tear — more 
deep,  more  bitter  because  unheard  and  unavailing." — Rural 
Funerals. 

"  I  sank  upon  the  grave  and  buried  my  face  in  the  tall  grass 
and  wept  like  a  child.  Yes,  I  wept  in  manhood  upon  the  grave, 
as  I  had  in  infancy  upon  the  bosom  of  my  mother.  Alas,  how 
little  do  we  appreciate  a  mother's  tenderness  while  living !  how 
heedless  are  we  in  youth  of  all  her  anxieties  and  kindness  !  But 
when  she  is  dead  and  gone  ;  when  the  cares  and  coldness  of  the 
world  come  withering  to  our  hearts ;  when  we  find  how  hard  it  is 
to  find  true  sympathy,  how  few  love  us  for  ourselves,  how  few  will 
befriend  us  in  our  misfortunes  ;  then  it  is  we  think  of  the  mother 
we  have  lost.  .  .  .  '  Oh,  my  mother  !'  exclaimed  I,  burying 
my  face  again  in  the  grass  of  the  grave  ;  '  oh,  that  I  were  once 


7 10  IRVING 

more  by  your  side,  sleeping,  never  to  wake  again  on  the  cares 
and  troubles  of  the  world  !  ' " — Tales  of  a  Traveller. 

5.  Kindly  Satire. — If  Horace  was  the  most  amiable  sat- 
tirist  among  the  ancients,  Irving  holds  that  rank  among  the 
moderns.  He  abounds  in  playful  jest,  but  his  jests  leave  no 
sting. 

"  The  boy  mischief  .  .  .  lingered  in  him  for  a  good 
while,  .  .  .  and  lent  not  a  little  point  to  some  of  the 
keener  pictures  of  the  '  Knickerbocker  History  of  New  York ; ' 
and  if  I  do  not  mistake,  there  was  now  and  then  a  quiet 
chuckle,  as  he  told  me  of  the  foolish  indignation  with  which 
some  descendants  .  .  .  had  seen  their  ancestors  put  to 
a  tender  broil  over  the  playful  blaze  of  his  humor. 
Can  you  recall  a  sneer  that  has  hate  in  it  anywhere  in  his 
books  ?  Can  you  tell  me  of  a  thrust  of  either  words  or  silence 
which  has  malignity  in  it  ?  .  .  .  Not  that  he  is  without 
a  quiet  power  and  exercise  of  satire — not  that  follies  which 
strike  his  attention  do  not  get  a  thrust  from  his  fine  rapier, 
but  they  are  such  follies,  for  the  most  part,  as  everybody  con- 
demns."— Dona  Id  G.  Mitchell. 

11  We  have  a  satire  keen  and  biting,  sparing  no  puffed-up 
dignity  in  state  or  in  letter  but  withal  so  good-natured  and 
forgiving  that  every  reader  is  made  more  charitable  instead  of 
more  censorious.  .  .  .  However  satirical  he  is,  there  is 
never  the  sneer  of  the  cynic.  .  .  .  However  much  he 
.ridicules  folly,  he  never  attempts  to  taunt  and  deride  it." — 
G.  P.  Putnam. 

"  If  there  are  touches  of  satire  in  his  writings,  he  is  the 
best  natured  and  most  amiable  of  satirists,  amiable  beyond 
Horace  !  and  in  his  irony — for  there  is  a  vein  of  playful  irony 
running  through  many  of  his  works — there  is  no  tinge  of  bit- 
terness. .  .  .  '  Salmagundi '  satirizes  the  follies  and  ridi- 
cules the  humors  of  the  times  with  great  prodigality  of  wit 
and  no  less  exuberance  of  good  nature." — Bryant. 


IRVING  711 

"The  delicate  flavor  of  Charles  Lamb  without,  however, 
the  sly  but  severe  bite  of  Lamb's  satire.  .  .  .  Knicker- 
bocker's comic  history  is  a  feat  of  playful  and  sustained  satire 
as  far  as  I  know  without  a  parallel." — H.  R.  Haweis. 

"  The  sympathetic  spirit  seen  in  the  author  enabled  John 
Bull  to  accept  fair  criticism  without  offence." — Charles  Dud- 
ley Warner. 

"  Irving  was  the  earliest  of  American  satirists,  but  there  is  no 
sting  in  the  laughter  that  he  moves." — George  William  Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  should  not  forget  to  mention  that  these  popular  meetings 
were  held  at  a  noted  tavern,  for  houses  of  that  description  have 
always  been  found  the  most  fostering  nurseries  of  politics, 
abounding  with  those  genial  streams  which  give  strength  and 
sustenance  to  faction.  We  are  told  that  the  ancient  Germans 
had  an  admirable  mode  of  treating  any  question  of  importance  ; 
they  first  deliberated  upon  it  when  drunk  and  afterwards  recon- 
sidered it  when  sober.  The  shrewder  mobs  of  America,  who 
dislike  having  two  minds  upon  a  subject,  both  determine  and  act 
upon  it  drunk,  by  which  means  a  world  of  cold  and  tedious 
speculation  is  dispensed  with  ;  and,  as  it  is  universally  allowed 
that  when  a  man  is  drunk  he  sees  double,  it  follows  most 
conclusively  that  he  sees  twice  as  well  as  his  sober  neighbors.'' — 
History  of  New  York. 

"  But  the  most  important  branch  of  civilization,  and  which  has 
been  most  strenuously  extolled  by  the  zealous  and  pious  fathers 
of  the  Romish  church,  is  the  introduction  of  the  Christian  faith. 
It  was  truly  a  sight  that  might  well  inspire  horror,  to  behold 
these  savages  stumbling  among  the  dark  mountains  of  paganism 
and  guilty  of  the  most  horrible  ignorance  of  religion.  It  is  true 
they  neither  stole  nor  defrauded  ;  they  were  sober,  frugal,  con- 
tinent, and  faithful  to  their  word  ;  but,  though  they  acted  right 
habitually,  it  was  all  in  vain  unless  they  acted  so  from  precept. 
The  newcomers,  therefore,  used  every  method  to  induce  them  to 
embrace  and  practice  the  true  religion — except  that  of  setting 
them  the  example." — History  of  New  York. 

"  The  grand  requisite  for  climbing  the  rugged  hill  of  popu- 


712  IRVING 

larity — the  summit  of  which  is  the  seat  of  power — is  to  be  useful. 
I  must  explain  what  we  understand  by  usefulness.  The  horse, 
in  his  native  state,  is  wild,  swift,  impetuous,  full  of  majesty,  and 
of  a  most  generous  spirit.  It  is  then  the  animal  is  noble,  exalted, 
useless.  But  entrap  him,  manacle  him,  cudgel  him,  break  down 
his  lofty  spirit,  put  the  curb  into  his  mouth,  the  load  upon  his 
back,  and  reduce  him  into  servile  obedience  to  the  bridle  and 
the  lash,  and  it  is  then  he  becomes  useful.  Your  jackass  is  one 
of  the  most  useful  animals  in  existence." — Salmagundi. 

6.  Mild  Melancholy — Contemplation. — "It  was  the 

instinct  of  Irving's  mind,"  says  Bryant,  "  to  attach  itself  to 
the  contemplation  of  the  good  and  the  beautiful."  And 
mingled  with  this  vein  is  one  of  melancholy  or  mild  regret. 
"  His  face  was  set  toward  the  past,  never  toward  the  future." 
This  characteristic  may  be  due,  at  least  in  part,  to  the  touch- 
ing romance  of  Irving's  earlier  years.  The  thought  of  her 
who  was  so  faithfully  loved,  so  early  lost,  seems  to  have  tinged 
his  whole  life. 

"  This  country  would  seem  at  first  to  be  quite  barren  of  food 
for  the  imagination  of  such  a  writer  as  Irving,  who  was  always 
a  backward-looking  man,  whose  mind  dwelt  more  willingly 
in  traditions  than  in  the  present.  .  .  .  That  his  early 
bereavement  cast  a  cloud  over  his  otherwise  gay  disposition 
and  gave  an  abiding  tinge  of  melancholy  to  his  life, 
is  evident  in  his  literature  here  and  there  and  in  certain  half- 
tones of  tenderness. " — Charles  Dudley  Warner. 

"  He  became  attached  to  a  young  lady  whom  he  was  to  have 
married.  She  died  unwedded  in  the  flower  of  her  age.  .  .  . 
Those  who  are  fond  of  seeking,  in  the  biographies  of  eminent 
men,  for  the  circumstances  which  determined  the  bent  of  their 
genius,  find  in  this  sad  event  and  the  cloud  it  cast  over  the 
hopeful  and  cheerful  period  of  early  manhood  an  explanation 
of  the  transition  from  the  unbounded  playfulness  of  the 
'  Knickerbocker  History  of  New  York  '  to  the  serious,  tender, 
and  meditative  vein  of  the  '  Sketch  Book.'  '  — Bryant. 


IRVING  713 

"  Irving  was  gay  and  full  of  humor,  even  in  spite  of  occa- 
sional fits  of  melancholy,  which  he  was,  however,  seldom  sub- 
ject to  when  with  those  he  liked." — Margaret  Fuller. 

"  His  point  of  view  was  retrospective  and  tranquil,  and  was 
particularly  grateful  to  a  people  who  had  just  emerged  from  the 
grim  realities  of  the  Revolution." — -Julian  Hawthorne. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  How  much,  thought  I,  has  each  of  these  volumes,  now 
thrust  aside  with  such  indifference,  cost  some  aching  head — how 
many  weary  days  !  how  many  sleepless  nights  !  How  have  their 
authors  buried  themselves  in  the  solitude  of  cells  and  cloisters  ; 
shut  themselves  up  from  the  face  of  man  and  the  still  more 
blessed  face  of  nature,  and  devoted  themselves  to  painful  re- 
search and  intense  reflection !  And  all  for  what  ?  to  occupy  an 
inch  of  dusty  shelf — to  have  the  titles  of  their  works  read  now  and 
then  in  a  future  age  by  some  drowsy  churchman  or  casual  strag- 
gler like  myself ;  and  in  another  age  to  be  lost  even  to  remem- 
brance. Such  is  the  amount  of  this  boasted  immortality.  A 
mere  temporary  rumor,  a  local  sound  ;  like  the  tone  of  that  bell 
that  has  just  tolled  among  these  towers,  filling  the  ear  for  a  mo- 
ment— lingering  transiently  in  echo — and  then  passing  away  like 
a  thing  that  was  not." — The  Mutability  of  Literature. 

11  I  remained  some  little  time,  musing  over  these  casual  relics 
of  antiquity,  thus  left  like  wrecks  upon  this  distant  shore  of  time, 
telling  no  tale  but  that  such  beings  had  been  and  had  perished. 
A  little  longer,  and  even  these  faint  records  will  be  obliterated, 
and  the  monument  will  cease  to  be  a  memorial.  Whilst  I  was  yet 
looking  down  upon  these  gravestones,  I  was  roused  by  the  sound 
of  the  abbey  clock,  reverberating  from  buttress  to  buttress  and 
echoing  among  the  cloisters.  It  is  almost  startling  to  hear  this 
warning  of  departed  time  sounding  among  the  tombs  and  telling 
the  lapse  of  the  hour,  which,  like  a  billow,  has  rolled  us  onward 
towards  the  grave." — Westminster  Abbey. 

"  To  a  mind  thus  temperately  harmonized,  thus  matured  and 
mellowed  by  a  long  lapse  of  years,  there  is  something  truly  con- 
genial in  the  quiet  enjoyment  of  our  early  autumn  amid  the 


7 14  IRVING 

tranquillities  of  the  country.  There  is  a  sobered  and  chastened 
air  of  gaiety  diffused  over  the  face  of  nature,  peculiarly  inter- 
esting to  an  old  man  ;  and  when  he  views  the  surrounding  land- 
scape withering  under  his  eye,  it  seems  as  if  he  and  nature  were 
taking  a  last  farewell  of  each  other  and  parting  with  a  melan- 
choly smile,  like  a  couple  of  old  friends  who,  having  sported 
away  the  spring  and  summer  of  life  together,  part  at  the  approach 
of  winter  with  a  kind  of  prophetic  fear  that  they  are  never  to 
meet  again." — Salmagundi. 

7.  Picturesqueness. — "In  all  his  wanderings,"  says 
H.  T.  Tuckerman,  "  his  eye  was  busy  with  the  scenes  of  nature 
and  cognizant  of  their  every  feature.  .  .  .  With  the  feel- 
ings of  a  poet  and  the  habitudes  of  an  artist,  he  wandered  over 
the  rural  districts  of  merry  England,  the  melancholy  hills  of 
romantic  Spain,  and  the  exuberant  wilderness  of  his  native 
land,  gathering  up  their  most  picturesque  aspects  and  transfer- 
ring them  with  the  pure  and  vivid  colors  of  his  genial  expres- 
sion into  permanent  memorials.  .  .  .  The  true  basis  of 
his  genius  is  artistic." 

"  The  perusal  of  Mr.  living's  writings  is  like  walking  in 
some  familiar  lawn  or  ordinary  scene  of  nature  on  a  fine  soft 
morning  in  spring.  A  lustrous  atmosphere  brings  out  each 
object  truly,  yet  under  such  strong  aerial  perspective  as  renders 
everything  picture-like.  .  .  .  We  meet  few  examples  of 
incidents  or  scenes  in  nature  rendered  with  simple  accuracy, 
as  by  historical  portraiture  of  a  real  occurrence.  Yet  such 
may  be  found  which  challenge  comparison  with  anything  in 
literature.  .  .  .  The  picture,  in  '  Bracebridge  Hall,'  of 
the  eagle  expelled  from  his  resting-place  is  unrivalled.  .  .  . 
The  description  of  Henry  VIII. 's  chapel,  in  the  'Sketch 
Book,'  is  equally  remarkable  in  a  very  different  style.  It  is  a 
true  Diisseldorf  picture,  minute  in  detail,  dazzling  in  coloring, 
with  a  delightful  bewilderment  thrown  over  its  actuality  by 
cross-lights  managed  with  consummate  skill.  .  .  .  As  a 
picturesque  painter  of  material  life  he  shines  without  an  equal. 


IRVING  715 

.  .  .  He  paints  an  ideal  picture  of  inanimate  nature,  of 
animals,  trees,  and  landscapes.  Mr.  Irving's  microscopic 
fidelity  accomplishes  some  remarkable  effects.  .  .  .  The 
attractiveness  of  his  tales  depends  upon  the  illustrative  talent 
of  the  narrator,  upon  the  innumerable  occasional  decorations 
that  delight  us  into  a  forgetfulness  of  the  plot,  and  upon  the 
pleasant  sketches  of  costume,  scenery,  and  manners  which  are 
hung  along  the  conduct  of  his  piece  in  such  profusion  that  it 
resembles  at  length  a  brilliant  gallery  of  pictures.  .  .  . 
He  is  in  description  what  Backhuysen  is  in  painting.  So 
prominent  is  the  perspective  that  you  seem  to  have  the  thing 
itself  rather  than  a  representation  of  it." — H.  B.  Wallace. 

"  He  not  only  seizes  upon  every  presentation  of  form  and 
color  in  objects,  but  paints  them  as  if  he  enjoyed  it.  What  he 
perceives  is  not  coldly  reflected  as  from  a  plate  of  burnished 
metal,  but  enters  into  his  life  and,  enriched  by  contact  with 
his  heart's  blood,  comes  forth  vitalized.  His  pictures  seem 
almost  to  pulsate  with  life.  .  .  .  He  deals  in  pictures, 
not  in  arguments.  His  symbol  in  nature  is  neither  the  vol- 
cano, flaming  with  unexpected  outbursts,  nor  the  meteor 
flashing  across  the  solemn  gloom  of  the  midnight  sky.  It  is 
the  iridescent  arch  of  the  rainbow,  unsurpassed  in  beauty,  but 
a  form  rather  than  a  force." — D.  J.  Hill. 

ft  In  our  lighter  literature  he  is  without  a  rival  as  an  artist. 
He  is  equally  happy  in  delineations  of  scenery  and  character. 
.  .  .  His  style  is  unrivalled  in  picturesque  effect."  — 
F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  There  is  in  his  writings  also  the  gayety  and  airiness  of  a 
light,  pure  spirit — a  fanciful  playing  with  common  things — 
and  here  and  there  beautiful  touches  till  the  ludicrous  be- 
comes half  picturesque.  .  .  .  Mr.  Irving's  scenery  is  so 
true,  so  full  of  little  beautiful  particulars,  that  .  .  .  the 
distant  is  brought  nigh  to  us  and  the  whole  is  seen  and  felt 
like  a  delightful  reality.  It  is  all  gentleness  and  sunshine;  the 
bright  influences  fall  on  us,  and  our  disturbed  and  lowering 


7l6  IRVING 

spirits  are  made  clear  and  tranquil — turned  all  to  beauty  like 
clouds  shone  upon  by  the  moon." — jK.  H.  Dana. 

' '  The  '  Sketch  Book '  was  like  the  portfolio  of  an  artist — a 
series  of  careful  and  authentic  studies  from  life  and  nature, 
embodying  the  natural  tastes  and  traits  of  the  man  as  elicited 
by  the  scenes  witnessed  and  the  moods  expressed  by  a  genial 
and  contemplative  wanderer." — G.  P.  Putnam. 

"  The  scenes  and  characters  [in  '  Rip  Van  Winkle'  ]  are  so 
harmonized  that  they  have  the  effect  of  a  picture,  in  which  all 
the  parts  combine  to  produce  one  charming  whole." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  The  boy  had  the  artistic  temperament — the  love  of  the 
picturesque  in  books." — Charles  Dudley  Warner. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  was  on  the  morning  after  the  events  recorded  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter  that  a  magnificent  and  powerful  train  issued 
forth  from  the  Christian  camp.  The  advanced  guard  was  com- 
posed of  legions  of  cavalry,  heavily  armed,  and  looked  like  mov- 
ing masses  of  polished  steel.  Then  came  the  king  and  queen, 
with  the  prince  and  princess  and  the  ladies  of  the  court,  sur- 
rounded by  the  body-guard,  sumptuously  arrayed,  composed  of 
the  sons  of  the  most  illustrious  houses  of  Spain  ;  after  these  was 
the  rear-guard,  composed  of  a  powerful  force  of  horse  and  foot ; 
for  the  flower  of  the  army  sallied  forth  that  day.  The  Moors 
gazed  with  fearful  admiration  at  this  glorious  pageant,  wherein 
the  pomp  of  the  court  was  mingled  with  the  terrors  of  the  camp. 
It  moved  along  in  a  radiant  line,  across  the  Vega,  to  the  melo- 
dious thunders  of  martial  music  ;  while  banner  and  plume  and 
silken  scarf  and  rich  brocade  gave  a  gay  and  gorgeous  relief  to 
the  grim  visage  of  iron  war  that  lurked  beneath." — Conquest  of 
Granada. 

"  The  sun  was  pouring  down  a  yellow  autumnal  ray  into  the 
square  of  the  cloisters,  beaming  upon  a  scanty  plot  of  grass  in 
the  centre  and  lighting  up  an  angle  of  the  vaulted  passage  with 
a  kind  of  dusty  splendor.  From  between  the  arcades,  the  eye 
glanced  up  to  a  bit  of  blue  sky  or  a  passing  cloud,  and  beheld 


IRVING 

the  sungilt  pinnacles  of  the  abbey  towering  into  the  azure  heav- 
ens."—  Westminster  Abbey. 

"  We  at  length  arrived  upon  the  highest  point  of  the  promon- 
tory above  Granada,  called  the  mountain  of  the  sun.  The  even- 
ing was  approaching  :  the  setting  sun  had  just  gilded  the  loftiest 
heights.  Here  and  there  a  solitary  shepherd  might  be  descried 
driving  his  flock  down  the  declivities  to  be  folded  for  the  night 
or  a  muleteer  and  his  lagging  animals  threading  some  mountain 
path,  to  arrive  at  the  city  gates  before  night-fall." — Salmagundi. 

8.  Smoothness — Elegance— Finish.— It  is  the  qual- 
ity so  easily  felt,  but  only  partly  expressed  by  these  terms,  that 
causes  Irving  to  be  called  the  American  Addison.  He  was 
pre-eminently  a  literary  man. 

"  No  writer  of  his  time  had  a  better  sense  of  literary  form 
and  proportion  ;  he  seems  to  have  been  born  with  this  as  with 
his  style.  ...  It  does  not  weary,  and  it  combines  many 
of  the  qualities  that  make  what  we  call  charm  in  lighter 
literature.  .  .  .  Surrender  yourself  to  the  flowing  cur- 
rent of  his  transparent  style,  and  you  are  conscious  of  a  be- 
guilement  which  is  the  crowning  excellence  of  all  lighter 
literature,  for  which  we  have  no  word  but  charm.  .  .  . 
That  his  style  was  influenced  by  the  purest  English  models 
was  apparent.  But  there  remains  a  large  margin  for  won- 
der how,  with  his  want  of  training,  he  could  have  elabo- 
rated a  style  which  is  distinctively  his  own,  and  is  as  copious, 
felicitous  in  the  choice  of  words,  flowing,  spontaneous,  flexi- 
ble, engaging,  clear,  and  as  little  wearisome  when  read  con- 
tinuously in  quantity  as  any  in  the  English  tongue.  .  . 
[' Bracebridge  Hall'  is]  the  perfection  of  ease  and  finish. 
.  .  .  He  felt  his  subject,  and  he  expressed  his  conception 
not  so  much  by  direct  statement  or  description  as  by  almost 
imperceptible  touches  of  shading  here  and  there,  by  a  dif- 
fused tone  and  color,  with  very  little  show  of  analysis." — 
Charles  Dudley  Warner. 

"  It  is  not  only  the  genial  philosophy,  the  humane  spirit, 


718  IRVING 

the  humor  and  pathos  of  Irving,  which  endear  his  writings 
and  secure  them  an  habitual  interest,  but  it  is  the  refreshment 
afforded  in  a  recurrence  of  the  unalloyed,  unaffected,  clear 
and  flowing  style  with  which  he  invariably  expresses  himself." 
— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  He  unites  the  various  qualities  of  a  perfect  manner  of 
writing.  ...  It  is,  above  the  style  of  all  other  writers  of 
the  day,  marked  with  expressive  elegance." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  His  style  is  transparent  as  the  light ;  sweetly  modulated, 
unaffected,  the  mature  expression  of  a  fertile  fancy,  a  benig- 
nant temper,  a  mind  which,  delighting  in  the  noble  and  the 
beautiful,  turned  involuntarily  away  from  their  opposites. " — 
Bryant. 

"  His  works  have  all  an  admirable  proportion  ;  nothing 
necessary  is  omitted  and  needless  details  are  avoided.  He 
never  fatigues  us  by  learned  antitheses  nor  by  the  parallelisms 
of  proverbial  philosophers — in  short,  we  can  say  that  his  style 
is  absolutely  unrivalled  in  its  fluency,  grace,  and  picturesque 
effect." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  To  all  readers  of  refined  taste  he  commended  himself  by 
the  remarkable  chastity  of  his  English  style  and  the  uncom- 
mon delicacy  of  his  moral  sense,  which,  even  in  the  tempting 
characters  of  the  early  Dutch  settlers  of  New  York,  did  not 
allow  him  to  be  betrayed  into  the  coarse  and  vulgar.  .  .  . 
If  we  were  to  characterize  a  manner,  which  owes  much  of  its 
merit  to  the  absence  of  any  glaring  characteristic,  we  should 
perhaps  say  that  it  is,  above  the  style  of  all  other  writers  of 
the  day,  marked  with  expressive  elegance." — Edward  Ever- 
ett. 

"  The  great  charm  and  peculiarity  of  his  work  consists  in 
the  singular  sweetness  of  the  composition  and  the  mildness  of 
the  sentiments.  .  .  .  We  happen  to  be  very  intense  and 
sensitive  admirers  of  those  soft  harmonies  of  studied  speech  in 
which  the  author  is  so  apt  to  indulge  himself:  and  we  have 
caught  ourselves  neglecting  his  excellent  matter,  to  lap  our- 


IRVING  719 

selves  in  the  liquid  music  of  his  periods — and  letting  ourselves 
float  passively  down  the  mellow  falls  and  windings  of  his  soft- 
flowing  sentences,  with  a  delight  not  inferior  to  that  which 
we  derive  from  fine  versification."— -Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Mrs.  Toole  has  for  some  time  reigned  unrivalled  in  the  fash- 
ionable world  and  had  the  supreme  direction  of  caps,  bonnets, 
feathers,  flowers  and  tinsel.  She  has  dressed  and  undressed  our 
ladies  just  as  she  pleased;  now  loading  them  with  velvet  and 
wadding,  now  turning  them  adrift  upon  the  world  to  run  shiver- 
ing through  the  streets  with  scarce  a  covering  to  their — backs  ; 
and  now  obliging  them  to  drag  a  long  train  at  their  heels,  like  the 
tail  of  a  paper  kite.  Her  despotic  sway,  however,  threatens  to 
be  limited.  A  dangerous  rival  has  sprung  up  in  the  person  of 
Madame  Bouchard,  an  intrepid  little  woman,  fresh  from  the 
headquarters  of  fashion  and  folly,  and  who  has  burst,  like  a  sec- 
ond Bonaparte,  upon  the  fashionable  world — Mrs.  Toole,  not- 
withstanding, seems  determined  to  dispute  her  ground  bravely 
for  the  honor  of  old  England.  The  ladies  have  begun  to  arrange 
themselves  under  the  banner  of  one  or  other  of  these  heroines 
of  the  needle,  and  everything  portends  open  war.  Madame 
Bouchard  marches  gallantly  to  the  field,  flourishing  a  flaming  red 
robe  for  a  standard,  '  flouting  the  skies  ; '  and  Mrs.  Toole,  no 
ways  dismayed,  sallies  out  under  cover  of  a  forest  of  artificial 
flowers,  like  Malcolm's  host.  Both  parties  possess  great  merit, 
and  both  deserve  the  victory." — Salmagundi. 

"  From  Poet's  Corner  I  continued  my  stroll  towards  that  part 
of  the  abbey  which  contains  the  sepulchres  of  the  kings.  I 
wandered  among  what  once  were  chapels,  but  which  are  now 
occupied  by  the  tombs  and  monuments  of  the  great.  At  every 
turn  I  met  with  some  illustrious  name  or  the  cognizance  of  some 
powerful  house  renowned  in  history.  As  the  eye  darts  into  these 
dusky  chambers  of  death,  it  catches  glimpses  of  quaint  effigies  ; 
some  kneeling  in  niches,  as  if  in  devotion,  others  stretched  upon 
the  tombs,  with  hands  piously  pressed  together ;  warriors  in 
armor,  as  if  reposing  after  battle  ;  prelates  with  crosiers  and 
mitres  and  nobles  in  robes  and  coronets,  lying,  as  it  were,  in 
State.  In  glancing  over  this  scene,  so  strangely  populous,  yet 


720  IRVING 

where  every  form  is  so  still  and  silent,  it  seems  almost  as  if  we 
were  treading  a  mansion  of  that  fabled  city  where  every  being 
had  been  suddenly  transmuted  into  stone." — Westminster  Abbey. 

"  During  my  residence  in  the  country,  I  used  frequently  to  at- 
tend at  the  old  village  church.  Its  shadowy  aisles,  its  mouldering 
monuments,  its  dark  oaken  panelling,  all  reverend  with  the 
gloom  of  departed  years,  seemed  to  fit  it  for  the  gloom  of  solemn 
meditation.  A  Sunday,  too,  in  the  country  is  so  holy  in  its  re- 
pose— such  a  pensive  quiet  reigns  over  the  face  of  nature  that 
every  restless  passion  is  charmed  down,  and  we  feel  all  the  nat- 
ural religion  of  the  soul  gently  springing  up  within  us." — The 
Widow  and  Her  Son. 

"  Following  the  current  of  the  brook  for  a  mile  or  two,  we  re- 
traced many  of  our  old  haunts,  and  told  a  hundred  adventures 
which  had  befallen  us  at  different  times.  It  was  like  snatching 
the  hour-glass  of  time,  inverting  it,  and  rolling  back  the  sands 
that  had  marked  the  lapse  of  years.  At  length  the  shadows  be- 
gan to  lengthen,  the  south  wind  gradually  settled  into  a  perfect 
calm,  the  sun  threw  his  rays  through  the  trees  on  the  hill-tops  in 
golden  lustre,  and  a  kind  of  Sabbath  stillness  pervaded  the  whole 
valley,  indicating  that  the  hour  was  fast  approaching  which  was 
to  relieve  for  a  while  the  farmer  from  the  rural  labor,  the  ox  from 
his  toil,  the  school-urchin  from  his  primer,  and  bring  the  loving 
plowman  home  to  the  feet  of  his  blooming  dairy-maid." — Sal- 
magundi. 

9.  Fondness  for  Tradition — Romanticism. — "He 
is  not  only  an  artist  of  the  beautiful  but  one  whose  pencil  is 
dipped  in  the  mellow  tints  of  legendary  lore." — H.  T.  Tucker- 
man. 

"  He  dearly  loved  to  wander  about  in  the  silent  woods,  by 
the  sparkling  streams,  in  the  solitude  of  the  hills,  under  the 
open  sky,  and  in  the  recesses  where  nature  whispered  to  him 
her  secrets,  and  to  dream  the  dreams  of  youth  and  romance. 
.  .  .  The  boy  was  a  dreamer  and  a  saunterer  ;  he  him- 
self says  that  he  used  to  wander  about  the  pier-heads  in 
fine  weather,  watching  the  ships  departing  on  long  voyages, 
and  dream  of  going  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  .  .  .  With 


IRVING  72 1 

the  romantic  period  of  Spanish  history  Irving  was  in  ardent 
sympathy.  The  story  of  the  Saracens  entranced  his  mind. 
His  imagination  disclosed  his  Oriental  qualities  while  he  pored 
over  the  romance  and  the  ruin  of  that  land  of  fierce  contrasts, 
of  arid  wastes  beaten  by  the  burning  sun,  valleys  blooming 
with  intoxicating  beauty,  cities  of  architectural  splendor  and 
picturesque  squalor.  It  is  a  matter  of  regret  that  he,  who 
seemed  to  need  the  Southern  sun  to  ripen  his  genius,  never 
made  a  pilgrimage  into  the  East  and  gave  to  the  world  pict- 
ures of  the  lands  that  he  would  have  touched  with  the  charm 
of  their  o\vn  color  and  the  witchery  of  their  own  romance. 
.  The  charm  of  '  The  Alhambra  '  is  largely  in  the  leis- 
urely, loitering,  dreamy  spirit  in  which  the  temporary  Ameri- 
can resident  of  the  ancient  palace-fortress  entered  into  its  wan- 
dering beauties  and  romantic  associations  and  in  the  artistic 
skill  with  which  he  wove  the  commonplace  daily  life  of  his 
attendants  there  into  the  more  brilliant  woof  of  the  past. 
.  .  .  There  is  no  question  of  our  national  indebtedness 
to  him  for  investing  a  crude  and  new  land  with  the  enduring 
charms  of  romance  and  tradition.  .  .  .  The  Knicker- 
bocker Legend  and  the  romance  with  which  Irving  has  in- 
vested the  Hudson  are  a  priceless  legacy  ;  and  this  would  re- 
main an  imperishable  possession  in  popular  tradition  if  the 
literature  creating  it  were  destroyed.  ...  In  fact,  it 
[•The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  ']  is  old.  And  yet  the  orig- 
inal setting,  the  exquisite  adaptation  of  the  legend  to  its  locality, 
make  it  a  new  creation.  It  has  the  same  dignity  of  antiquity 
as  '  The  Legend  of  the  Seven  Sleepers  of  Ephesus. '  .  .  . 
Legends  these  were  which  Irving  heard,  .  .  .  but  it  was 
genius  that  gave  the  folk-tales  form  and  added  them  to  the 
romance  of  the  world.  .  .  .  This  sort  of  creation  is  un- 
equalled in  modern  times.  His  mind  dwelled  more  willingly 
in  traditions  than  in  the  present.  .  .  .  It  ['  History  of 
Columbus  ']  is  in  fact  a  composition  of  that  borderland  be- 
tween legend  and  history." — Charles  Dudley  Warner. 
46 


722  IRVING 

"The  charming  stories  comprised  in  the  Alhambra  vol- 
ume, not  less  than  the  Hudson  legends,  show  his  fertility  of 
thought,  his  originality  of  invention,  his  romantic  tendency. 
.  [The]  old-fashioned  flavor  [which  his  works  bore], 
as  though  they  had  been  taken  from  the  drawers  of  an  ancient 
secretary  scented  with  faded  rose-leaves,  gives  them  an  added 
charm." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"He  manifested  a  tender,  satisfied  repose  in  the  venerable 
by  his  quiet  delight   in   the  implicit  tradition  of 
English  civility,  the  scarcely  felt  yet  everywhere  influential 
presence  of  a  beautiful  and  grave  past." — Edward  Dowiicn. 

"  The  consequence  of  this  style  of  dainty  selection  and  ex- 
quisite indistinctness  is  that  we  cannot  determine  whether  we 
are  reading  a  professed  fiction  or  an  intended  history. 
In  the  history  of  the  siege  of  Granada  this  puzzle  between 
truth  and  fiction  becomes  absolutely  offending." — H.  B. 
Wallace. 

"  In  all  his  wanderings  his  eye,  ...  his  memory, 
brooded  over  the  traditions  of  the  past,  and  his  heart  caught 
and  reflected  every  phase  of  humanity.  .  .  .  The  lights 
and  shadows  of  English  life,  the  legendary  romance  of  Spain, 
the  novelty  of  a  tour  on  the  prairies  of  the  West  and  of  ad- 
ventures in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  poetic  beauty  of  the 
Alhambra,  the  memories  of  Abbotsford  and  Newstead  Abbey, 
the  quaint  and  comfortable  philosophy  of  the  Dutch  colonists, 
and  the  scenery  of  the  Hudson,  are  themes  upon  which  he 
expatiates  with  the  grace  and  zest  of  a  master." — H.  T.  Tuck- 
erman. 

"  To  pass  the  vague  and  venerable  traditions  of  the  austere 
and  heroic  founders  of  the  city  through  the  alembic  of  a 
youth's  hilarious  creative  humor  and  turn  them  out  in  forms 
resistlessly  grotesque  but  with  their  identity  unimpaired,  was 
a  stroke  as  daring  as  it  was  successful.  The  audacious  Goth 
of  the  legend  who  plucked  the  Roman  senator  by  the  beard 
was  not  a  more  ruthless  iconoclast  than  this  son  of  New  Am- 


IRVING  723 

sterdam,  who  drew  his  civil  ancestors  from  venerable  obscur- 
ity by  flooding  them  with  the  cheerful  light  of  a  blameless 
fun." — George  William  Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  was  the  recollection  of  this  romantic  tale  of  former  times 
and  of  the  golden  little  poem  which  had  its  birth-place  in  this 
tower,  that  made  me  visit  the  old  pile  with  more  than  common 
interest.  The  suit  of  armor  hanging  up  in  the  hall,  richly  gilt 
and  embellished,  as  if  to  figure  in  the  tourney,  brought  the  image 
of  the  gallant  and  romantic  prince  vividly  before  my  imagination. 
I  paced  the  deserted  chambers  where  he  had  composed  his 
poem ;  I  leaned  upon  the  window  and  endeavored  to  persuade 
myself  it  was  the  very  one  where  he  had  been  visited  by  his 
vision  ;  I  looked  out  upon  the  spot  where  he  had  first  seen  Lady 
Jane."—  The  Sketch  Book. 

"  As  he  was  one  evening,  about  twilight,  passing  through  the 
Court  of  Lions,  he  heard  footsteps  in  the  Hall  of  the  Abencerrages. 
Supposing  some  loungers  to  be  lingering  there,  he  advanced  to 
attend  upon  them,  when,  to  his  astonishment,  he  beheld  four 
Moors  richly  dressed,  with  gilded  cuirasses  and  cimeters  and 
poniards  glittering  with  precious  stones.  They  were  walking  to 
and  fro  with  solemn  pace,  but  paused  and  beckoned  to  him. 
The  old  soldier,  however,  took  to  flight,  and  could  never  after- 
ward be  prevailed  upon  to  enter  the  Alhambra.  Thus  it  is  that 
men  sometimes  turn  their  backs  upon  fortune  ;  for  it  is  the  firm 
opinion  of  Mateo  that  the  Moors  intended  to  reveal  the  place 
where  their  treasures  lay  buried.  A  successor  to  the  invalid 
soldier  was  more  knowing  ;  he  came  to  the  Alhambra  poor,  but 
at  the  end  of  a  year  he  went  off  to  Malaga,  bought  horses,  set  up 
a  carriage,  and  still  lives  there,  one  of  the  richest  as  well  as  the 
oldest  men  of  the  place,  all  which,  Mateo  sagely  surmises,  was 
in  consequence  of  his  finding  out  the  golden  secret  of  these 
phantom  Moors." — The  Alhambra. 

11  Day  after  day  he  watched  for  the  return  of  the  messenger  of 
love  ;  but  he  watched  in  vain.  He  began  to  accuse  him  of 
forgetfulness,  when  toward  sunset  one  evening  the  faithful  bird 
fluttered  into  his  apartment,  and,  falling  at  his  feet,  expired. 
The  arrow  of  some  wanton  archer  had  pierced  his  breast,  yet  he 


724         •  IRVING 

had  struggled  with  the  lingerings  of  life  to  execute  his  mission. 
As  the  prince  bent  with  grief  over  this  gentle  martyr  to  fidelity, 
he  beheld  a  chain  of  pearls  round  his  neck,  attached  to  which, 
beneath  his  wing,  was  a  small  enameled  picture.  It  represented 
a  lovely  princess  in  the  very  flower  of  her  years.  It  was  doubtless 
the  unknown  beauty  of  the  garden.  But  who  and  where  was  she  ? 
How  had  she  received  his  letter — and  was  this  picture  sent  as  a 
token  of  approval  of  his  passion  ?  Unfortunately,  the  death  of 
the  faithful  dove  left  everything  in  mystery  and  doubt." — The 
Alhambra. 


HAWTHORNE,  1804-1864 

Biographical  Outline. — Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  born  at 
Salem,  Mass.,  July  4,  1804  ;  ancestors  (who  spelled  their  name 
Hathorne)  were  prominent  in  the  public  affairs  of  New  Eng- 
land ;  his  father  and  grandfather  were  shipmasters ;  father 
dies  in  Nathaniel's  fourth  year;  Hawthorne  shows  no  pre- 
cocious traits;  in  1853  he  wrote  of  his  childhood:  "One 
of  the  peculiarities  of  my  boyhood  was  a  grievous  disinclina- 
tion to  go  to  school,  and  (Providence  favoring  me  in  this 
natural  repugnance)  I  never  did  go  half  as  much  as  other 
boys,  partly  owing  to  delicate  health  (which  I  made  the  most 
of  for  the  purpose)  and  partly  because,  much  of  the  time,  there 
were  no  schools  within  reach;  "  he  reads  "  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress "  and  "  The  Faerie  Queene  "  as  a  boy ;  is  lame  for  a 
time,  and  has  for  a  tutor  Dr.  Worcester,  of  Dictionary  fame ; 
in  1818  his  mother  removes  to  Raymond,  Me.,  near  Lake 
Sebago,  where  the  family  had  lands  and  where,  says  Haw- 
thorne, "  I  first  got  my  cursed  habits  of  solitude ;  "  he  roams 
the  woods  alone,  and  skates  alone  till  midnight  on  the  lake ; 
begins  to  make  experiments  in  verse,  printing  some  of  them  in 
Boston  papers;  returns  alone  to  Salem  in  1819,  and  enters 
school  there;  begins  preparation  for  college  in  1820  under  a 
private  tutor;  writes  to  his  mother,  "You  are  in  danger  of 
having  one  learned  man  in  your  family.  ...  I  get  my 
lessons  at  home  and  recite  them  to  him  [the  lawyer-tutor]  at 
seven  in  the  morning.  .  .  .  Shall  you  want  me  to  be  a 
minister,  doctor,  or  lawyer?  A  minister  I  will  not  be  ;  "  he 
enters  Bowdoin  College  in  1821  ;  writes  to  his  mother,  "  I  am 
quite  reconciled  to  going  to  college  if  I  am  to  spend  the  vaca- 

725 


726  HAWTHORNE 

tions  with  you  [in  Maine].  Yet  four  years  of  the  best  of  my 
life  is  a  great  deal  to  throw  away; "  among  his  fellow-students 
at  Bowdoin  are  Longfellow,  Franklin  (afterward  President), 
Pierce,  and  Horatio  Bridge,  with  the  two  latter  of  whom 
Hawthorne  forms  a  close  and  lifelong  friendship ;  in  the  pref- 
ace to  "  The  Snow  Image  "  he  says  to  Bridge,  "  If  anybody 
is  responsible  at  this  day  for  my  being  an  author,  it  is  your- 
self; "  in  1821  Hawthorne  writes  to  his  mother:  "  What  do 
you  think  of  my  becoming  an  author  and  relying  for  support 
upon  my  pen?  Indeed,  I  think  the  "illegibility  of  my  hand- 
writing very  author-like.  How  proud  you  would  be  to  see 
my  works  praised  by  the  reviewers  as  equal  to  the  proudest 
productions  of  the  scribbling  sons  of  John  Bull  ;  "  he  is  only 
a  fair  student  at  Bowdoin,  "  doing  a  hundred  things  the  Fac- 
ulty never  heard  of,  or  else  it  had  been  worse  for  us ;  "  at  one 
time  he  is  fined  fifty  cents  by  the  Faculty  for  playing  cards 
for  money;  is  graduated  in  1825,  and  returns  to  Salem, 
whither  his  mother  had  meantime  returned  ;  of  this  period 
Hawthorne  says:  "  It  was  my  fortune  or  misfortune,  just  as 
you  please,  to  have  some  slender  means  of  supporting  myself, 
and  so,  ...  instead  of  immediately  studying  a  profes- 
sion, I  sat  myself  down  to  consider  what  pursuit  in  life  I  was 
best  fit  for.  ...  I  had  always  a  natural  tendency  tow- 
ard seclusion.  ...  I  had  very  few  acquaintances  in 
Salem,  and  during  the  nine  or  ten  years  that  I  spent  there  in 
this  solitary  way  I  doubt  whether  so  much  as  twenty  people 
of  the  town  were  aware  of  my  existence.  ...  I  had  read 
endlessly  all  sorts  of  good  and  good-for-nothing  books,  and, 
in  the  dearth  of  other  employment,  had  early  begun  to  scrib- 
ble sketches  and  stories,  most  of  which  I  burned ;  "  he  con- 
tributes a  few  sketches  to  the  Token,  a  Boston  annual,  and 
publishes  a  romance  entitled  "  Fanshawe  "  anonymously  at 
his  own  expense  in  1828  ;  soon  afterward  he  collects  and 
annihilates  the  entire  edition  ;  makes  a  critical  study  of  many 
novels ;  begins  contributing  to  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine 


HAWTHORNE  727 

in  1836,  and  during  the  same  year  goes  to  Boston  to  become 
editor  of  The  American  Magazine  of  Useful  and  Entertain- 
ing Knowledge,  at  a  salary  of  $500  ;  the  periodical  has  a 
short  life  and  is  a  financial  failure,  Hawthorne  getting 
but  $20  for  his  four  months'  service  as  editor;  meantime 
he  helps  to  prepare  an  "  Universal  History,"  which  becomes 
a  popular  text-book  and  for  his  share  in  which  Hawthorne 
receives  $100;  he  returns  to  Salem  and  publishes  "Twice- 
Told  Tales"  in  the  spring  of  1837;  about  this  time  he 
is  duped  by  an  adventuress,  and  is  induced  to  challenge 
an  old  friend  to  a  duel ;  explanations  are  made,  and  the 
friendship  is  renewed,  but  Hawthorne's  faith  in  human  nat- 
ure is  sorely  shaken,  especially  as  his  promptness  in  sending 
the  challenge  influences  his  old  college  friend  (then  Congress- 
man) Cilley  to  accept  a  challenge  from  a  Southerner  (Wise), 
which  results  fatally  to  Cilley  ;  some  of  the  first  series  of 
"Twice-Told  Tales"  reflect  Hawthorne's  remorse  and  his 
views  of  moral  guilt  at  this  period;  from  1832  to  1838  he  had 
printed  in  the  Token,  the  New  England  Magazine,  the  Amer- 
ican Magazine,  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  and  the  Demo- 
cratic Review  some  forty-four  articles,  many  of  them  reprinted 
in  "  Twice-Told  Tales  ;  "  meantime  "  he  had  little  commun- 
ication even  with  the  members  of  his  own  family  ;  frequently 
his  meals  were  brought  and  left  at  his  locked  door. 
He  seldom  chose  to  walk  in  town  except  at  night ' '  [see  the 
"Night  Sketches"  in  "  Twice-Told  Tales"];  in  1837  he 
meets  Sophia  Peabody,  an  invalid  artist,  the  daughter  of  a 
Salem  bookseller  and  related  to  Elizabeth  Peabody  ;  Julian 
Hawthorne  calls  her  "  Hawthorne's  true  guardian  and  recreat- 
ing angel;  "  each  falls  rapturously,  but  silently,  in  love  with 
the  other;  they  become  engaged  early  in  1839,  but  conceal 
their  relation  for  three  years,  owing  to  Miss  Peabody's  ill- 
health,  to  the  opposition  to  the  match  by  Hawthorne's  sister 
Elizabeth,  and  to  the  abnormal  nervousness  of  his  mother; 
early  in  1839  he  is  appointed  weigher  and  gauger  in  the  Bos- 


728  HAWTHORNE 

ton  Custom  House  at  a  salary  of  $1,200,  a  position  which  he 
called  "  a  very  grievous  thraldom"  and  from  which  he  was 
removed  in  1841  through  political  changes ;  in  April,  1841, 
he  goes  to  reside  with  the  socialistic  community  at  Brook 
Farm,  but  as  a  visitor  rather  than  a  member;  "  does  his  share 
of  the  farm-work  like  a  man,"  and  does  not  shrink  from  milk- 
ing cows  and  shovelling  manure  ;  while  at  Brook  Farm  he 
gathers  the  material  for  his  "  Blithedale  Romance;"  Miss 
Peabody  recovers  from  her  illness  in  1842,  and  is  married  to 
Hawthorne,  July  gth,  after  an  ideal  courtship — "  a  love-story 
such  as  the  angels  might  delight  to  hear,"  and  "the  lovers 
were  justified  in  believing  that  Love  himself  was  the  physi- 
cian ;  "  they  settle  in  "  The  Old  Manse  "  at  Concord,  where 
"Mr.  Emerson  passes  by  with  a  sunbeam  in  his  face;  " 
Hawthorne  becomes  intimate  with  Emerson,  who  "  talks  to 
him  all  the  time,  while  Hawthorne  looks  answers;"  Una, 
Hawthorne's  first  child,  is  born  at  Concord ;  they  return  to 
Salem  in  the  autumn  of  1845,  in  financial  straits,  because  of  the 
failure  of  Hawthorne's  debtors  to  pay  him  for  literary  work  ; 
in  the  spring  of  1843  he  writes  :  "  I  have  written  with  pretty 
commendable  diligence,  averaging  twelve  to  fourteen  hours 
a  day,  and  the  result  is  seen  in  various  magazines.  .  .  . 
Meantime  the  magazine  people  [the  Democratic  Revieiv\  do 
not  pay  their  debts,  so  that  we  taste  some  of  the  inconven- 
iences of  poverty  ;  "  March  23,  1846,  Hawthorne  is  appointed 
by  President  Polk  Surveyor  of  the  Custom  House  at  Salem 
at  a  salary  of  $1,200  ;  he  spends  the  summer  of  1846  in  Bos- 
ton, where  his  second  child,  Julian,  is  born;  in  September, 
1847,  on  moving  into  the  Salem  house,  where  "  The  Scarlet 
Letter  "  was  written,  Mrs.  Hawthorne  writes  :  "He  has  now 
lived  in  the  nursery  a  year  without  a  chance  of  one  hour's  un- 
interrupted musing  and  without  his  desk  being  once  opened  ;  " 
he  loses  his  place  in  the  Salem  Custom  House  in  the  summer 
of  1849  through  political  chicanery  ;  begins  "  The  Scarlet 
Letter,"  which  he  completes  in  six  months,  though  harassed 


HAWTHORNE  729 

meantime  by  his  "official  decapitation,"  by  the  illness  and 
death  of  his  mother  (who  was  at  that  time  a  member  of  Haw- 
thorne's family),  and  at  times  by  severe  physical  pain  ;  the 
first  edition  of  "  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  (5,000  copies)  is  ex- 
hausted within  ten  days,  and  Hawthorne  finds  himself  famous  ; 
the  book  is  highly  praised  by  English  periodicals ;  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1850  he  removes  to  Lenox,  Mass.,  in  the  Berkshire 
Hills,  where  he  settles  "in  a  small  red  house  .  .  . 
far  from  a  comfortable  residence,  but  he  had  no  means  of  ob- 
taining a  better  one  ;  "  writes  "The  House  of  the  Seven  Ga- 
bles "  at  Lenox,  and  publishes  it  in  March,  1851  ;  it  is  warm- 
ly praised  in  reviews  by  Longfellow  and  Lowell ;  Hawthorne's 
second  daughter,  Rose,  is  born  at  Lenox  in  May,  1851  ;  in 
the  June  following  he  begins  "  The  Wonder  Book,"  "  the 
only  book  he  ever  published  which  has  not  a  gloomy  page  in 
it,"  finishes  it  in  six  weeks,  and  publishes  it  in  July,  1851  ;  he 
removes,  in  November,  1851,  to  West  Newton,  Mass.,  where 
he  writes  "The  Blithedale  Romance;  "  during  the  winter  of 
1851-52,  he  buys  from  Bronson  Alcott  the  old  home  of  the 
latter  at  Concord,  and  settles  there  in  June,  1852;  Haw- 
thorne names  the  place,  with  its  twenty  acres  of  land,  "  The 
Wayside;"  it  is  two  miles  from  "  The  Old  Manse,"  with 
which  it  has  often  been  confounded;  meantime  "The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables"  becomes  most  popular  in  England  and 
is  twice  translated  into  German  ;  Hawthorne  publishes  "  The 
Blithedale  Romance  "  in  the  summer  of  1851  ;  he  is  deeply 
affected  by  the  drowning  of  his  sister  Louisa  from  a  burning 
steamboat  on  the  Hudson  in  July,  1852;  finishes  "  Tangle- 
wood  Tales  "  in  March,  1853,  and  publishes  it  in  the  fol- 
lowing autumn  ;  in  August  and  September,  1853,  he  writes 
the  biography  of  his  old  friend  Franklin  Pierce,  as  a  campaign 
document — "such  a  testimony  to  the  character  of  a  presi- 
dential candidate  as  was  never  before  thrown  upon  the  fierce 
arena  of  political  warfare  ;  "  he  visits  the  Isles  of  Shoals  with 
Pierce  later  in  the  autumn ;  at  first  he  refuses  President  Pierce' s 


73O  HAWTHORNE 

urgent  offers  of  official  appointment,  but  finally  accepts  the 
consulship  at  Liverpool,  for  which  he  is  confirmed  March  26, 
18^53  ;  sails  for  Liverpool  late  in  the  following  June  ;  the  three 
American  novels  ("  The  Scarlet  Letter,"  "  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables,"  and  "  The  Blithedale  Romance  ")  are  reprint- 
ed in  England  ;  the  first  two  are  pirated,  but  for  "  The  Blithe- 
dale  Romance"  Hawthorne  receives  ^200  from  Chapman  & 
Hall  ;  during  the  following  six  years  he  writes  only  the  manu- 
script volumes  of  his  English,  French,  and  Italian  journals  ;  at 
Liverpool  he  begins  a  correspondence  with  De  Quincey,  and 
forms  a  close  friendship  with  Henry  Bright,  who  had  visited 
Concord  the  year  before ;  Hawthorne  finds  the  consulship  less 
remunerative  than  he  had"  expected ;  spends  a  part  of  the 
summer  of  1855  at  Leamington  and  in  the  Lake  District,  re- 
turning to  "this  black  and  miserable  hole"  (Liverpool) 
more  miserable  because  of  an  unexpected  reduction  in  his  pay 
just  then  ;  visits  London  in  September,  1855,  escorting  Mrs. 
Hawthorne  on  her  way  to  Lisbon,  where  she  spends  the  fol- 
lowing winter  in  search  of  health  ;  he  revisits  London  in  the 
spring  of  1856,  and  receives  attention  from  several  literary 
lights,  including  Howitt  and  Charles  Reade;  visits  Abbots- 
ford  and  York  in  1856,  and  meets  Alexander  Ireland,  Emer- 
son's friend  ;  spends  the  summer  of  1856  near  Southampton, 
and  thence  to  Bennoch's  home  near  London,  where  Haw- 
thorne meets  the  Brownings,  Florence  Nightingale,  Macaulay, 
and  others ;  he  then  resides  for  ten  months  at  Southport,  near 
Liverpool;  resigns  his  consulship  in  September,  1857,  and 
settles  temporarily  in  London  ;  on  the  i3th  of  January,  1856, 
starts  for  Italy  by  way  of  Paris,  leaving  with  Henry  Bright 
his  English  journals,  "  not  to  be  opened  till  1900  ;  "  "  shiv- 
ers through  some  of  the  palaces  and  churches  of  Genoa,"  and 
soon  afterward  reaches  Rome,  where  he  forms  a  close  friend- 
ship with  Story,  the  sculptor,  and  meets  Bryant,  Miss  Bremer, 
and  other  literary  people ;  leaves  Rome  for  Florence  in  May, 
1858;  resides  first  at  the  villa  Mcptauto,  a  mile  outside  the 


HAWTHORNE  731 

city,  near  Mrs.  Browning's  Casa  Guidi,  where  Hawthorne 
writes  the  first  sketch  of  "The  Marble  Faun,"  afterward  re- 
written at  Redcar  in  England ;  he  returns  to  Rome  by  way 
of  Sienna  in  October,  and  resides  there  at  28  Piazza.  Poli  till 
May,  1859,  but  writes  nothing  because  of  the  almost  fatal  ill- 
ness of  his  daughter  Una ;  he  leaves  Rome  May  26,  1859,  and 
returns  to  London,  stopping  briefly  at  Genoa,  Marseilles,  Avig- 
non, Geneva,  Villeneuve,  and  Paris;  meets  Thomas  Hughes, 
Monckton  Milnes,and  Chorley ;  retires  to  Red  car,  near  Whitby, 
in  July  in  order  to  prepare  "  The  Marble  Faun  "  for  publica- 
tion ;  thence  to  Leamington  in  October,  where  he  remains  till 
March,  1860,  and  where  he  finishes  the  romance ;  "  The  Mar- 
ble Faun  "  is  published  in  London  by  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.  in 
February,  1860,  under  the  title  "Transformation,"  and  is 
favorably  received ;  Hawthorne  goes  to  London  in  May,  1860, 
where  he  meets  Motley  and  Layard,  and  thence  to  America  in 
June ;  he  remodels  ' '  The  Wayside ' '  and  settles  there  ;  is  so  op- 
pressed by  the  political  conditions  that  he  writes  nothing  dur- 
ing 1860  ;  in  1 86 1  begins  his  romance  "  Septimius,"  the  first 
and  longest  sketch  of  which  has  never  been  published  ;  during 
1 86 1  Hawthorne  contributes  to  the  Atlantic  the  articles  based 
on  his  English  Note-Books,  which  were  afterward  gathered 
into  a  volume  entitled  "  Our  Old  Home,"  published  in  1863  ; 
he  receives  $200  for  each  article  in  the  Atlantic  ;  in  the  spring 
of  1862  he  visits  Washington  and  the  seat  of  war,  and  contrib- 
utes to  the  Atlantic  an  article  entitled  ' '  Chiefly  about  War  Mat- 
ters," appending  ironical  notes  expressing  "the  horror-stricken 
comments  of  the  editor  upon  the  writer's  want  of  patriotism," 
which  deceived  many  readers;  spends  the  summer  of  1862 
seeking  for  health  on  the  Maine  coast,  near  Mount  Desert;  be- 
gins the  second  sketch  of  • '  The  Dolliver  Romance ' '  (Septimius) 
in  the  winter  of  1862-63,  an(^>  contrary  to  his  custom,  allows 
the  first  part  to  be  published  serially  before  the  manuscript  is 
completed ;  afterward  withdraws  the  introductory  chapter, 
and  writes  to  the  editor  of  the  Atlantic :  "  There  are  two  or 


732  HAWTHORNE 

three  chapters  ready  to  be  written,  but  I  am  not  robust  enough 
to  begin  ;  "  his  health  continues  to  decline  during  1863  ;  he  is 
visited  by  his  old  friend  ex-President  Pierce  early  in  1864; 
in  March,  1864,  he  starts  southward  in  search  of  health,  ac- 
companied by  W.  D.  Ticknor;  Ticknor's  sudden  death  while 
they  are  together  in  Philadelphia,  in  April,  greatly  shocks 
Hawthorne  and  aggravates  his  malady  (which  no  one  seemed 
to  understand);  he  returns  to  Boston  with  Ticknor's  remains, 
and  on  May  i5th  starts  with  P'ierce  for  a  tour  of  Northern 
New  England  ;  dies  suddenly  at  Plymouth,  N.  H.,  May  18, 
1864  ;  after  his  death  his  journals  of  England,  Italy,  etc.,  are 
transcribed  and  published  by  Mrs.  Hawthorne ;  afterward  his 
daughter  Una  and  Robert  Browning  decipher  the  second 
manuscript  of  "  Septimius  Felton,"  and  it  is  published  in  the 
Atlantic  ;  "  Grimshawe  "  has  also  been  published  since  Haw- 
thorne's death. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON    HAWTHORNE'S   STYLE. 

Hutton,    R.    H.,    "Literary  Essays."     New    York,    1888,    Macmillan, 

437-490. 
Rice,  A.  T.  (G.  W.  Curtis),  "  Essays  from  the  North  American  Review." 

New  York,  1879,  Appleton,  334-358. 
James,  H.,  "English  Men  of  Letters."     New  York,   1880,    Harper,  v. 

index. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Character  and   Characteristic  Men."     Boston,    1866, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  218-242. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."     New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

2:   330-390. 
Page,  H.  A.,  "A  Memoir  of  Nathaniel   Hawthorne."     London,    1872, 

King&  Co.,  1-113. 
Underwood,  F.  H.,   "A   Handbook  of  English  Literature."     Boston, 

1873,  Lee  &  Shepard,  241-242. 
Fields,  J.  T.,  "Nathaniel  Hawthorne."     Boston,  1876,  Osgood  &  Co., 

128,  etc. 
Lathrop,  G.  P.,  "  A  Study  of  Hawthorne."    Boston,  1876,  Osgood  &  Co., 

v.  index. 
Higginson,  T.  W.,    "  Short  Studies. "      Boston,    1888,  Lee  &  Shepard, 


HAWTHORNE  733 

Tuckerman,  H.  T. ,  "Mental   Portraits.''     London,    1853,    R.    Bentley, 

250-270. 
Stedman,  E.  C.,  "Hawthorne  and  Other  Poems."     Boston,    1877,  Os- 

good  &  Co.,  11-25. 

Nichol,  J.,  "American  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1882,  Black,  322-352. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  "The  Literati."     New  York,  1855,  Redneld,  188-202. 
Smith,    G.    B.,    "Poets  and   Novelists."     New  York,    1876,  Appleton, 

151-206. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Outlooks."     Boston,  1888,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co., 

3I7-3I8. 
Symonds,  J.   A.,  "Hawthorne,  an  Oration."     Portland,  1878,  Bowdoin 

Alumni. 
Conway,   M.  D.,    "Life  of  Nathaniel   Hawthorne."     (Great  Writers), 

New  York,   1890,  Lovell,  13-215. 
Bridge,  H.,  "  Personal   Recollections  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne."     New 

York,  1893,  Harper,  1-200. 
Hutton,    R.    H.,    "Essays,   Theological  and  Critical."     London,  1877, 

Dolly  &  Co.,  2:  370-416. 
Drake,  S.  A.,  "Our  Great  Benefactors."     Boston,   1884,  Roberts,  116- 

124. 
Fields,  J.  T.,  "  Yesterdays  with  Authors."     Boston,    1893,    Houghton, 

Mifflin  &  Co.,  39-124. 
Walsh,  W.  Shepard,  "The  Literary  Life."     New  York,  1882,  Putnam, 

150-160. 
Stephen,   L.,  "Hours  in  a   Library."     New  York,   1894,  Putnam,  i: 

169-199. 
Taylor,  B.,  "  Critical  Essays  and  Notes. "     New   York,    1880,   Putnam, 

354-357- 
Mitford,  M.  R.,  "  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."     New  York,  1851, 

Harper,  5*5-532- 
Phillips,  M.  G.,  "A  Manual  of  English  Literature."     New  York,  1893, 

Harper,  2 :  437~439- 
Xorth   American   Review,    99:    539-557    (G.    W.    Curtis);  45:   59- 73 

(Longfellow);   76:    227-248  (Peabody) ;   129:    203-222  (A.  Trol- 

lope);  71:   135-148  (A.  W.  Abbott) ;  99:   539-554  (G.  W.  Curtis). 
North  British  Review,  49 :  93-113;  49:   173-208. 
Scribner's  Monthly,  u  :    799-808(6.  P.  Lathrop). 
Atlantic  Monthly,    14:  98-101   (Holmes);    5:   509-510  (Editor) ;   22: 

359-374  (Peabody) ;   5  :  614-622   (Whipple) ;   26 :     257-272   (Hfl- 

lard) ;   51-363-375  (Lathrop)  ;  26:   257-272  (Hillard). 
Harper's  Magazine,  45  :  683-697  (Stoddard). 
Christian  Examiner,  25  :    182-190  (Peabody). 


734  HAWTHORNE 

The  Nation,  14:    172-173  (H.  James);    n  :   59-61  (J.  R.  Dennett). 

Westminster  Review,  142  :  203-214  (Bradfield) ;  58  :  592-598  ;  73  : 
338-340. 

Andover  Review,  18 :  139-147(0.  W.  Curtis);  7:  31-46  (C.  L.  Star- 
buck). 

Methodist  Quarterly  Review,  48 :  409-433  (R.  G.  Houghton). 

Century  Afagazine,  10:  83-93  (J-  Hawthorne);  28:  3-17  (J.  Haw- 
thorne). 

The  New  Englander,  5  :   56-69  (S.  W.  S.  Button). 

Eclectic  Magazine,  77:    174-186  (M.  Browne). 

American  Whig  Review,  4:   296-316  (C.^W.  Weber). 

Belgravia,  19  :   72-79  (Kenningale  Cook). 

Catholic  World,  32  :   231-237  (J.  V.  O'Connor). 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  94  :  610-623. 

New  Monthly  Magazine,  w.   202-212  (Sir  Nathaniel) ;  98:   202-207. 

Cornhill  Magazine,  23:  321-336,  444-456,  and  566-575. 

Every  Saturday,  13:    179-180. 

Overland  Magazine,  2:    138-143  (D.  Libby). 

The  Galaxy,  6  :    742-748  (E.  Benson). 

The  Catholic  Presbyterian,  6 :   33-42  (A.  C.  Roe). 

St.  Paul's  Magazine,  9:   311-313  (G.  P.  Lathrop.) 

London  Quarterly  Review,  37  :  48-78. 

Universalist  Quarterly,  8  :   272-293  (A.  D.  Mayo). 

The  Critic,  3  :   65-66  (J.  H.  Morse). 

Taifs  Magazine,  23  :   756-757  ;   22  :   33-41. 

Lippincott's  Magazine,  43  :   250  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 

Democratic  Review,  16  :  376-384. 

National  Review,  n  :  453-481. 


PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Mysticism — Weirdness. — "  The  old  witch-hanging 
city  [Salem]  had  no  weirder  product  than  this  dark-haired 
son.  .  .  .  The  mind  of  Justice  Hawthorne's  descendant 
was  bewitched  by  the  fascination  of  a  certain  devilish  subtlety 
under  the  comeliest  aspect  of  human  affairs.  ...  In  the 
preface  to  the  'Twice-Told  Tales,'  Hawthorne  says:  'Even 
in  what  purport  to  be  pictures  of  actual  life,  we  have  alle- 
gory, not  always  so  warmly  dressed,  in  its  habiliments  of  flesh 


HAWTHORNE  735 

and  blood  as  to  be  taken  into  the  reader's  mind  without  a 
shiver.'  .  .  .  The  spell  of  mysterious  horror  which  kin- 
dled Hawthorne's  imagination  was  a  test  of  the  character  of 
his  genius.  The  mind  of  this  child  of  witch-haunted  Salem 
loved  to  hover  between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural,  and 
sought  to  tread  the  almost  imperceptible  and  doubtful  line  of 
contact.  He  instinctively  sketched  the  phantoms  that  have  the 
figures  of  men  but  are  not  human.  .  .  .  His  genius  broods 
entranced  over  the  evanescent  phantasmagoria  of  the  vague 
delectable  land  in  which  the  realities  of  experience  blend  with 
ghostly  doubts  and  wonders.  .  .  .  Thus  it  was  because  the 
early  New  England  life  made  so  much  larger  account  of  the 
supernatural  element  than  any  other  modern  civilized  society 
that  the  man  whose  blood  had  run  in  its  veins  instinctively 
turned  to  it.  Human  life  and  character,  whether  in  New 
England,  two  hundred  years  ago,  or  Italy  to-day,  interested 
him  only  as  they  were  touched  with  this  glamour  of  sombre 
spiritual  mystery.  .  .  .  His  own  times  and  their  people 
and  their  affairs  were  just  as  shadowy  to  him  as  those  of  any 
of  his  stories.  He  wrote  like  a  disembodied  intelligence  of 
events  with  which  his  neighbors'  hearts  were  quivering." — 
George  William  Curtis. 

"A  kindred  element  in  his  genius  is  his  affinity  with  the 
weird,  the  mysterious,  the  supernatural.  His  page  is  dappled 
with  lights  and  shadows  derived  from  other  suns  than  ours. 
No  foot  moved  with  firmer  tread  than  his  over  that  dim  twi- 
light region  which  lies  between  the  seen  and  the  unseen.  The 
skill  with  which  he  weaves  his  threads  of  mystery  into  the 
web  of  common  life,  the  firm  hand  with  which  he  controls 
the  shadowy  shapes  which  he  evokes,  the  art  with  which  he 
leaves  his  problems  half  unsolved  and  the  reader's  mind  in 
doubt  as  to  how  much  he  himself  believed  of  the  wonders 
he  suggested  or  revealed — these  are  among  the  most  strik- 
ing characteristics  of  his  peculiar  and  original  genius."- 
G.  S.  Hillard. 


736  HAWTHORNE 

"  He  was  really  the  ghost  of  New  England — I  do  not  mean 
the  '  spirit '  nor  the  '  phantom,'  but  the  ghost  in  the  older  sense 
in  which  that  term  is  used — the  thin,  rarefied  essence  which 
is  supposed  to  be  found  somewhere  behind  the  physical  organ- 
ization ;  .  endowed  with  a  certain  painful  sense  of  the 
gulf  between  his  nature  and  its  organization,  always  recogniz- 
ing the  gulf,  always  trying  the  bridge  over  it,  and  always  more 
or  less  unsuccessful  in  the  attempt.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing 
more  ghostly  in  his  writings  than  his  account  of  the  consul- 
ship at  Liverpool.  .  .  .  Hawthorne,  who  was  a  delicate 
critic  of  himself,  was  well  aware  of  the  shadowy  character  of 
his  own  genius,  though  hardly  aware  that  precisely  here  lay  its 
curious  and  thrilling  power.  .  .  .  Hawthorne's  peculiar 
genius  lies  in  the  power  he  possesses  to  be  haunted  and,  in 
his  turn,  to  haunt  the  reader  with  his  conceptions  far  more 
than  in  their  intrinsic  force." — JR.  H.  Hutton. 

"  But  he  whose  quickened  eye 
Saw  through  New  England's  life  her  inmost  spirit — 

Her  heart  and  all  the  stays  on  which  it  leant — 

Returns  not  since  he  laid  the  pencil  by 
Whose  mystic  touch  none  other  shall  inherit. 

What  sybil  to  him  bore 

The  secret  oracles  that  move  and  haunt  ? 

At  night's  dread  noon  he  scanned  the  enchanted  glass, 
Ay,  and  himself  the  warlock's  mantle  wore, 

Nor  to  the  thronging  phantoms  said  Avaunt, 

But  waved  his  wand  and  bade  them  rise  and  pass." 

— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  strange  mysteries  in  which  the  world  and  our  natures 
are  shrouded  are  always  present  to  his  imagination;  he 
catches  dim  glimpses  of  the  laws  which  bring  out  strange  har- 
monies but  on  the  whole  tend  rather  to  deepen  than  to  clear 


HAWTHORNE  737 

the  mysteries.  He  loves  the  marvellous,  not  in  the  vulgar 
sense  of  the  word,  but  as  a  symbol  of  perplexity  which  en- 
counters every  thoughtful  man  in  his  journey  through  life." 
— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  This  air,  on  the  author's  part,  of  being  a  confirmed 
habitue  of  a  region  of  mysteries  and  subtleties,  constitutes  the 
originality  of  his  tales." — Henry  James. 

"  His  fondness  for  the  out-of-the-way,  the  grotesque,  and 
the  abnormal  is  appeased  a  little  by  the  introduction  of  the 
mesmerist  element  into  composition." — G.  B.  Smith. 

"  Nothing  could  be  more  remote  from  the  ordinary  pict- 
ures of  life  and  manners  as  shown  in  the  modern  novel  than 
the  romances  of  Hawthorne.  Boston,  as  he  paints  it,  is  as 
far  away  as  old  Troy.  There  are  striking  and  life-like  figures 
which  we  see  involved  in  the  magical  web  of  his  story,  but 
the  art  of  the  romancer  throws  upon  them  a  film  of  distance, 
so  that  we  seem  contemplating  phantasms.  An  air  of  mystery 
broods  over  every  scene,  whether  it  is  in  a  many-gabled  house 
or  in  the  depths  of  an  original  forest.  The  reader  feels  a  tin- 
gling in  the  silence  of  his  room  as  in  the  days  when  his  boy- 
ish terrors  were  roused  by  stories  of  ghosts.  He  feels  that  he 
is  entering  a  realm  over  which  shines  '  a  light  that  never  was 
on  sea  or  land,'  where  the  flowers  are  like  their  semblance  in 
wax,  where  the  sounds  of  laughter  have  ceased  to  echo,  and 
where  the  grave  people,  each  burdened  with  his  sin  or  his  sor- 
row, walk  about  like  the  unresting  throng  in  the  halls  of 
Eblis,  each  holding  his  hand  over  his  ever-burning  heart." 
— F.  If.  Underwood. 

"  He  always  takes  us  below  the  surface  and  beyond  the 
material.  .  .  .  He  makes  us  breathe  the  air  of  contem- 
plation and  turns  our  eyes  inward.  .  .  .  It  is  as  if  we 
went  forth  in  a  dream  into  the  stillness  of  an  autumn  wood  or 
stood  in  a  vast  gallery  of  old  pictures.  .  .  .  The  appeal  is 
to  the  retrospective,  the  introspective,  to  what  is  thoughtful 
and  profoundly  conscious  in  our  nature  and  whereby  it  com- 
47 


738  HAWTHORNE 

munes  with  the  mysteries  of  life  and  the  occult  intimations  of 
nature.  .  .  .  It  is  around  the  boundary  of  the  possible 
that  he  most  freely  expatiates ;  the  realities  and  the  mysteries 
of  life,  to  his  vision,  are  scarcely  apart ;  they  act  and  react 
so  as  to  yield  dramatic  hints  or  vistas  of  sentiment." — H.  T. 
Tuckerman. 

"  The  element  of  poetry  is  air ;  we  know  the  poet  by  his 
atmospheric  effects,  by  the  blue  of  his  distance,  by  the  soften- 
ing of  every  hard  outline  he  touches,  by  the  silvery  mist  in 
which  he  veils  deformity  and  clothes  what  is  common  so  that 
it  changes  to  awe-inspiring  mystery,  by  the  clouds  of  gold  and 
purple  which  are  the  drapery  of  his  dreams.  And  surely  we 
have  had  but  one  prose-writer  who  could  be  compared  with 
him  in  aerial  perspective,  if  we  may  use  the  painter's  term.  If 
Irving  is  the  Claude  of  our  unrhymed  poetry,  Hawthorne  is  its 
Poussin." — O.  W.  Holmes. 

In  concluding  "  The  Marble  Faun,"  Hawthorne  says  of  his 
own  work  :  "  The  idea  of  the  modern  Faun  loses  all  the 
poetry  and  beauty  which  the  author  fancied  in  it,  and  be- 
comes nothing  better  than  a  grotesque  absurdity,  if  one  bring 
it  into  the  light  of  day." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Her  singing  was  as  the  murmur  of  a  soul  bewildered  amid 
the  sinful  gloom  of  earth  and  retaining  only  enough  memory  of 
a  better  state  to  make  sad  music  of  the  wail,  which  would  else 
have  been  a  despairing  shriek.  .  .  .  Her  studio  was  one  of 
those  delightful  spots  that  hardly  seem  to  belong  to  the  actual 
world  but  rather  to  be  the  outward  type  of  a  poet's  haunted 
imagination,  where  there  are  glimpses,  sketches,  and  half-de- 
veloped hints  of  beings  and  objects  grander  and  more  beauti- 
ful than  we  can  anywhere  find  in  reality." — The  Marble  Faun. 

"Without  absolutely  expressing  a  doubt  whether  the  stalwart 
Puritan  had  acted  as  a  man  of  conscience  and  integrity  through- 
out the  proceedings  which  might  have  been  sketched,  they, 
nevertheless  hinted  that  he  was  abont  to  build  his  house  over 


HAWTHORNE  739 

an  unquiet  grave.  His  home  would  include  the  home  of  the 
dead  and  buried  wizard,  and  would  thus  afford  the  ghost  of 
the  latter  a  kind  of  privilege  to  haunt  its  new  apartments  and 
the  chambers  into  which  future  bridegrooms  would  lead  their 
brides.  .  .  .  The  terror  and  ugliness  of  Maule's  crime  and  the 
wretchedness  of  his  punishment  would  darken  the  freshly  plas- 
tered walls  and  infect  them  early  with  the  scent  of  an  old  and 
melancholy  house." — The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables. 

"  In  the  midst  of  this  wild  scene,  where  unbound  passions 
jostled  each  other  in  a  drunken  career,  there  was  one  solemn 
voice  of  a  man,  and  a  manly  and  melodious  voice  it  might  once 
have  been.  He  went  to  and  fro  continually,  and  his  feet 
sounded  upon  the  floor.  In  each  member  of  that  frenzied  com- 
pany, whose  own  burning  thoughts  had  become  their  exclusive 
world,  he  sought  an  auditor  for  the  story  of  his  own  individual 
wrong,  and  interrupted  their  laughter  and  tears  as  his  reward  of 
scorn  or  pity.  He  spoke  of  woman's  perfidy,  of  a  wife  who  had 
broken  her  holiest  vows,  of  a  home  and  heart  made  desolate. 
Even  as  he  went  on,  the  shout,  the  laugh,  the  shriek,  the  sob, 
rose  in  unison,  till  they  changed  into  the  hollow,  fitful,  and  un- 
even sound  of  the  wind,  as  it  fought  among  the  pine  trees  on 
those  three  lonely  hills.  The  lady  looked  up,  and  there  was  the 
withered  woman  smiling  in  her  face." — Twice-Told  Tales. 

2.  Profound  Moral  Insight. — "The  common  theme 
of  all  Hawthorne's  stories  is  the  deeper  psychology.  They 
deal,  one  and  all,  with  what  homely  folk  are  disposed  to  call 
the  mysteries  of  man's  soul  and  conscience." — Hazeltine. 

"The  subtle  analysis  of  spiritual  moods,  which  made  him 
at  home  in  the  darkest  recesses  of  the  human  heart,  long  re- 
flection upon  the  motives  and  moods  and  processes  in  minds 
conscious  of  crimes,  sure  intuition  of  the  laws  that  govern 
them,  a  profound,  perhaps  melancholy,  thoughtfulness  upon  the 
problems  of  good  and  evil,  guilt  and  sorrow,  life  and  death — 
these  are  but  new  growths  in  later  times  of  those  dark- veined 
leaves  that  grew  of  old  upon  the  Puritan  stalk.  ...  In 
psychological  insight  he  is  unrivalled  among  the  men  of  our 
time." — J.  A.  Symonds. 


740  HAWTHORNE 

"  His  fondness  for  the  analysis  of  the  moral  and  mental 
framework  of  humanity  is  evidently  absorbing.  .  .  . 
What  the  scientific  use  of  lenses — the  telescope  and  the  micro- 
scope— does  for  us  in  relation  to  the  external  universe,  the 
psychological  writer  achieves  in  regard  to  our  own  nature. 
He  reveals  its  wonder  and  beauty,  unfolds  its  complex  laws, 
and  makes  us  suddenly  aware  of  the  mysteries  within  and 
around  individual  life.  In  the  guise  of  attractive  fiction,  and 
sometimes  of  the  most  airy  sketches,  Hawthorne  thus  deals 
with  his  reader.  .  .  .  If  we  were  obliged  to  desig- 
nate that  [mood]  of  Hawthorne  in  a  single  word,  we  should 
call  it  metaphysical  or  perhaps  soulful.  He  always  takes  us 
below  the  surface  and  beyond  the  material.  .  .  .  Per- 
haps the  union  of  the  philosophic  tendency  with  the  poetic 
instinct  is  the  great  charm  of  his  genius.  .  .  .  He  opens 
vistas  into  that  beautiful  and  unexplored  world  of  thought  that 
exists  in  every  human  being,  though  overshadowed  by  material 
circumstance  and  technical  duty." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  The  problems  that  Hawthorne  started  were  usually  con- 
nected with  the  deepest  mysteries  of  the  human  mind  and 
conscience.  .  .  .  He  carried  this  preference  for  delineat- 
ing states  of  mind  and  obscurely  suggesting  the  class  of  facts 
which  may  have  given  rise  to  them  to  the  farthest  point  in 
his  last  novel,  '  Transformation.'  " — J?.  H.  Hutton. 

"  The  great  question  over  which,  in  one  form  or  other, 
Hawthorne  perpetually  broods  is  the  nature  of  Evil,  the  effect 
on  the  soul  of  error  and  misery  and  remorse  and  their  mys- 
terious relations  to  the  highest  forms  of  human  heroism  and  to 
human  progress." — -J.  Nichol. 

"  A  man  of  morbid  shyness,  the  path  of  whose  genius  di- 
verged always  out  of  the  sun  into  the  darkest  shade  and  to 
whom  human  beings  were  merely  psychological  phenomena. 
He  treated  his  companions  [in  the  Custom-house] 
as  he  treated  himself  and  all  the  personages  in  history  and 
experience  with  whom  he  dealt — merely  as  phenomena  to  be 


HAWTHORNE  741 

analyzed  and  described.  ...  It  was  not  beauty  itself 
nor  deformity — not  virtue  nor  vice  which  engaged  the  author's 
deepest  sympathy.  It  was  the  occult  relation  between  the 
two.  ...  In  his  simplest  passages  he  still  seems  to  be 
studying  and  curiously  observing  rather  than  sympathizing. 
His  first  romance  (then  acknowledged,  and  now 
forgotten)  was  marked  by  that  startling  self-possession  of  style 
and  cold  analysis  of  passion,  rather  than  sympathy  with  it, 
which  showed  no  imitation  but  remarkable  original  power. 
The  same  lurid  gloom  overhangs  it  that  shadows  all  his  works. 
It  is  uncanny ;  the  figures  of  the  romance  are  not  persons, 
they  are  passions,  emotions,  spiritual  speculations." — George 
William  Curtis. 

"  But  none  save  he  in  our  own  time  so  laid 
His  summons  on  man's  spirit ;  none  but  he, 
Whether  the  light  thereof  were  clear  or  clouded, 
Thus  on  his  canvas  fixed  the  human  soul, 
The  thought  of  mystery, 

In  deep  hearts  by  this  moral  guise  enshrouded, 
Wild  hearts  that  like  the  church-bells  ring  and  toll." 

— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  In  the  '  Prophetic  Pictures,'  '  Fancy's  Show-Box,'  '  The 
Great  Carbuncle,'  'The  Haunted  Mind,'  and  'Edward 
Fane's  Rose-bud  '  there  are  flashes  of  moral  insight  which 
light  up,  for  the  moment,  the  darkest  recesses  of  the  individual 
mind.  ...  In  this  two-fold  power  of  insight  into  souls 
and  of  the  spiritual  laws  which  regulate  both  the  natural  ac- 
tion and  morbid  aberrations  of  souls,  Hawthorne  is  so  incom- 
parably great  that  in  comparison  with  him  all  the  other 
romancers  of  the  century,  whether  German,  French,  English, 
or  American,  seem  to  be  superficial.  .  .  .  Scott  once 
said  that  there  were  depths  in  human  nature  which  it  was  un- 
healthy to  attempt  to  sound  ;  and  it  is  in  attempting  to  sound 


742  HAWTHORNE 

these  that  Hawthorne  has  exhibited  his  most  marvellous  gifts 
of  insight  and  characterization.  In  the  subtlety  and  accuracy, 
the  penetration  and  sureness  of  his  glance  into  the  morbid 
phenomena  of  the  human  soul ;  in  exhibiting  the  operation 
of  the  most  delicate  laws  of  attraction  and  repulsion  which 
human  natures  can  experience ;  in  the  capacity  to  terrify  his 
readers  with  the  consciousness  of  their  latent  possibilities  for 
evil,  so  that  they  shrink  from  his  exposures  like  guilty  things 
surprised;  he. makes  novelists  like  Thackeray  and  Dickens 
appear  relatively  superficial.  .  .  .  With  his  insight  of 
individual  souls  he  combines  a  far  deeper  insight  of  the  spir- 
itual laws  which  govern  the  strangest  aberrations  of  individual 
souls."—  E.  P.  \Vhipple. 

"  His  intellectual  and  moral  insight  is  so  like  one  laying 
bare,  under  the  greatest  stress  of  circumstances,  the  inmost 
secrets  of  his  own  heart  that  we  cannot  forbear  investing  him 
with  the  intelligence  and  something,  too,  of  the  dread  which 
we  are  apt  to  associate  with  clairvoyants.  .  .  .  Haw- 
thorne has  insight  in  the  profoundest  sense — a  consciousness 
of  visible  and  invisible  life  and  of  sound  and  unsound  charac- 
ter, a  gift  of  real  analysis.  ...  In  his  subtle  and  strong 
moral  insight  he  surely  represented  his  Puritan  ancestors  in 
the  most  worthy  and  obviously  sympathetic  way. 
He  is  in  the  position  of  the  father-confessor  of  whom  he  at  one 
time  thinks,  .  .  .  as  he  looks  around  his  congregation, 
all  whose  secret  sins  are  known  to  him." — G.  P.  Lathrop. 

"The  charm — the  great  charm — is  that  they  [Hawthorne's 
works]  are  glimpses  of  a  great  field,  of  the  whole  deep  mys- 
tery of  man's  soul  and  conscience." — Henry  James. 

"  He  calls  your  attention  to  the  profound  ethics  involved 
in  the  tale,  and  yet  does  it  so  gently  that  you  never  think  of 
the  moral  as  being  obtrusive." — T.  IV.  Higginson. 

"  Shakespeare,  Scott,  and  Dickens  create  characters  and 
place  them  before  us  clothed  in  their  proper  figures  and  using 
their  proper  and  characteristic  speech.  Hawthorne  reverses 


HAWTHORNE  743 

the  process,  and,  taking  the  ideal  person  for  granted,  shows 
him  as  upon  a  dissecting  table,  and  lays  bare  every  throbbing 
nerve  and  every  secret  fibre  of  his  soul." — F.  H.  Undem>ood. 
"  This  '  inward  sphere,'  the  human  heart,  was  Hawthorne's 
field  of  study  and  portrayal.  He  saw  and  described  its  in- 
nocence, its  purity,  its  loveliness,  its  noble  hopes,  its  truest 
triumphs,  its  temptations,  its  sinful  tendency,  its  desperate 
struggles,  its  downward  motions,  its  malignity,  its  total  de- 
pravity, at  least  in  appearance,  its  final  putrefaction  and  self- 
destruction — the  only  destruction  of  which,  in  the  divine 
plan,  it  is  capable.  .  .  .  Hawthorne  goes  to  the  depths 
of  the  soul  in  his  search  for  the  basal  principle  of  human  ac- 
tion."— C.  F.  Richardson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  is  Guilt  ?  A  stain  upon  the  soul.  And  it  is  a  point  of 
vast  interest  whether  the  soul  may  contract  such  stains,  in  all 
their  depth  and  flagrancy,  from  deeds  which  have  been  plotted  and 
resolved  upon,  but  which,  physically,  have  never  had  existence. 
Must  the  fleshly  hand  and  the  visible  frame  of  man  set  its  seal  to 
the  evil  designs  of  the  soul,  in  order  to  give  them  their  entire 
validity  against  the  sinner  ?  Or,  while  none  but  crimes  per- 
petrated are  cognizable  before  an  earthly  tribunal,  will  guilty 
thoughts — of  which  guilty  deeds  are  no  more  than  shadows — will 
these  draw  down  the  full  weight  of  a  condemning  sentence  in  the 
supreme  court  of  eternity  ?  In  the  solitude  of  a  midnight 
chamber,  or  in  a  desert  afar  from  men,  or  in  a  church,  while  the 
body  is  kneeling,  the  soul  may  pollute  itself  even  with  those 
crimes  which  we  are  accustomed  to  deem  altogether  carnal.  If 
this  be  true,  it  is  a  fearful  truth." — Fancy1  s  Show- B ox . 

"The  man  with  the  dagger  thrust  back  the  weapon  into  his 
bosom  and  drew  forth  a  pocket  pistol,  but  not  of  that  kind  which 
kills  by  a  single  discharge.  It  was  a  flask  of  liquor  with  a 
block-tin  tumbler  screwed  upon  its  mouth.  Each  drank  a  com- 
fortable draw,  and  left  the  spot  with  so  many  jests  and  such 
laughter  at  their  unaccomplished  wickedness  that  they  might  be 
said  to  have  gone  on  their  way  rejoicing.  In  a  few  hours  they 


744  HAWTHORNE 

had  forgotten  the  whole  affair,  nor  once  imagined  that  the 
recording  angel  had  written  down  the  crime  of  murder  against 
their  souls  in  letters  as  durable  as  eternity." — David  Swan. 

"  We  have  called  the  Evil ;  now  let  us  call  the  Good. 
Does  none  answer  to  the  call  ?  Not  one  ;  for  the  just,  the  pure, 
the  true,  and  all  who  might  most  worthily  obey  it,  shrink  sadly 
back  as  most  conscious  of  error  and  imperfection.  Then  let  the 
summons  be  to  those  whose  pervading  principle  is  love.  This 
classification  will  embrace  all  the  truly  good  and  none  in  whose 
souls  there  exists  not  something  that  may  expand  itself  into  a 
heaven  both  of  well-doing  and  felicity." — Mosses  from  an  Old 
Manse. 


3.  Imaginative  Power. — "  Hawthorne  was  imagination 
in  the  flesh.  Imagination  and  fancy  load  his  most  fragile 
theme ;  and  to  strip  them  away  would  be  to  leave  a  skeleton 
one  would  hardly  deem  it  possible  to  so  build  on  and  vivify 
as  to  make  it  a  thing  of  beauty.  Here  is  Hawthorne's  skill 
and  charm  ;  and,  conscious  of  it,  he  was  perpetually  adding 
to  the  number  of  meagre  hard-outlined  notes  of  natural  ap- 
pearance, ...  by  cunning  use  of  which  he  held  warp 
and  weft  of  gossamer  to  the  ground.  Had  Hawthorne  em- 
ployed fancy  only,  he  would  have  left  an  enviable  reputation  ; 
as  it  is,  the  employment  of  it  seems  to  have  been  frequently  the 
indulgence  of  a  native  bent  as  a  means  of  rest  from  the  ex- 
hausting exercise  of  pure  imagination." — -John  Vance  Cheney. 

"  In  a  peculiar  and  restricted  domain  of  imagination  .  .  . 
Hawthorne  has  fairly  outmatched  all  his  English  brethren. 
He  is  the  Jonathan  Edwards  of  the  imaginative  representation 
of  life  as  Thackeray  is  its  Hume." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  In  no  [other]  American  writer  is  to  be  found  the  same 
predominance  of  weird  imagination  as  in  Hawthorne." — 
Anthony  Trollope. 

"  That  delicate  and  penetrating  imagination  which  was 
always  at  play,  always  entertaining  itself,  always  engaged  in 
a  game  of  hide-and-seek  in  the  region  in  which  it  seemed  to 


HAWTHORNE  745 

him  that  the  game  could  best  be  played — among  the  snadows 
and  substructions,  the  dark-based  pillars  and  supports  of  our 
moral  nature — this  is  the  real  charm  of  Hawthorne's  writing, 
this  purity  and  spontaneity  and  naturalness  of  fancy." — 
Henry  James. 

"These  effusions  ['Twice-Told  Tales']  of  Mr.  Hawthorne 
are  the  product  of  a  truly  imaginative  intellect,  restrained  and 
in  some  measure  repressed  by  fastidiousness  of  taste.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Hawthorne's  distinctive  trait  is  invention,  creation,  im- 
agination, originality." — Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

"  In  our  view  the  most  remarkable  trait  in  his  writings  is 
this  harmonious  blending  of  the  common  and  familiar  in  the 
outward  world  with  the  mellow  and  vivid  tints  of  his  own 
imagination.  .  .  .  They  [his  tales]  almost  invariably 
possess  the  reality  of  tone  which  perpetuates  imaginative  lit- 
erature, .  .  .  buoyant  with  a  fantasy  as  aerial  as  Shel- 
ley's conceptions." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  The  secret  of  his  power  lies  in  the  great  art  with  which 
he  reflects  and  re-reflects  the  main  idea  of  the  tale  from  the 
countless  faces  of  his  ghostly  imagination  until  the  reader's 
mind  is  absolutely  haunted  by  it." — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  The  scenes  of  Hawthorne's  novels  are  not  accessible  by 
earthly  travel.  His  books,  being  works  of  art  and  of  imag- 
ination, can  be  efficiently  explained  and  illuminated  only  by 
study  of  their  inner  aim  and  significance,  to  which  the  pict- 
ures of  nature  and  human  nature  which  they  contain  are 
strictly  auxiliary."—; Julian  Hawthorne. 

"How  masterly  is  the  touch  of  the  artist's  crayon  in  this 
imaginative  creation  ['The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables'] 
based  upon  the  mental  and  moral  anatomy  of  actual  beings. 
.  .  .  How  lightly  his  spirit  hovers  over  the  streams  of 
actual  life,  scarcely  touching  it  before  springing  up  again, 
like  a  seabird  on  the  crest  of  a  wave  !  Nothing  could  be 
more  accurate  and  polished  than  his  descriptions  and  his 
presentations  of  the  actual  facts;  but  his  fancy  rises  resilient 


746  HAWTHORNE 

from  these  to  some  dreamy,  far-seeing  perception  or  gentle 
moral  inference.  The  visible  human  pageant  is  only  of  value 
to  him  as  it  suggests  the  viewless  host  of  heavenly  shapes 
that  hang  above  it  like  an  idealizing  mirage.  .  .  .  Haw- 
thorne, .  .  .  the  calm,  ardent,  healthy  master  of  im- 
agination."—  G.  P.  Lathrop. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  He  [the  faun]  drank  in  the  natural  influence  of  the  scene, 
and  was  intoxicated  as  by  an  exhilarating  wine.  He  ran  races 
with  himself  along  the  gleam  and  shadow  of  the  wood- paths. 
He  leapt  up  to  catch  the  overhanging  bough  of  an  ilex,  and 
swinging  himself  by  it  alighted  far  onward,  as  if  he  had  flown 
thither  through  the  air.  In  a  sudden  rapture  he  embraced  the 
trunk  of  a  sturdy  tree,  and  seemed  to  imagine  it  a  creature 
worthy  of  affection  and  capable  of  a  tender  response  ;  he  clasped 
it  closely  in  his  arms,  as  a  Faun  might  have  clasped  the  warm 
feminine  grace  of  the  nymph,  whom  antiquity  supposed  to  dwell 
within  that  rough,  encircling  rind.  Then,  in  order  to  bring  him- 
self closer  to  the  genial  earth  with  which  his  kindred  instincts 
linked  him  so  strongly,  he  threw  himself  at  full  length  on  the 
turf,  and  pressed  down  his  lips,  kissing  the  violets  and  daisies, 
which  kissed  him  back  again,  though  shyly,  in  their  maiden 
fashion." —  The  Marble  Faun. 

"  One  of  these  rooms  was  filled  with  moonlight,  which  did  not 
enter  through  the  window,  but  was  the  aggregate  of  all  the 
moonshine  that  is  scattered  around  the  earth  on  a  summer  night 
while  no  eyes  are  awake  to  enjoy  its  beauty.  Airy  spirits  had 
gathered  it  up,  wherever  they  found  it  gleaming  on  the  broad 
bosom  of  a  lake,  or  silvering  the  meanders  of  a  stream  or 
glimmering  among  the  wind  stirred  boughs  of  a  wood,  and  had 
garnered  it  in  this  one  spacious  hall." — Mosses  from  an  Old 
Manse. 

"  In  these  lengthened  vigils,  his  [Dimmesdale's]  brain  often 
reeled,  and  visions  seemed  to  flit  before  him  ;  perhaps  seen 
doubtfully  and  by  a  faint  light  of  their  own  in  the  remote 
dimness  of  the  chamber  or  more  vividly  and  close  beside  him 
within  the  looking  glass.  Now  it  was  a -herd  of  diabolical  shapes, 


HAWTHORNE  747 

that  grinned  and  mocked  at  the  pale  minister  and  beckoned  him 
away  with  them  ;  now  a  group  of  shining  angels,  who  flew  up- 
ward heavily,  as  sorrow-laden,  but  grew  more  ethereal  as  they 
rose.  Now  came  the  dead  friends  of  his  youth  and  his  white- 
bearded  father  with  a  saint-like  frown  and  his  mother  turning 
her  face  away  as  she  passed  by." — The  Scarlet  Letter. 

4.  Semi-Fatalism — Quietism. — "  He  was,  in  political 
and  social  conviction,  a  democratic  quietist ;  one  might 
almost  say  a  fatalist.  .  .  .  His  deeply  rooted  conviction 
that,  as  far  as  any  real  and  deep  .reform  is  accomplished,  it 
may,  in  a  certain  sense,  be  said  to  accomplish  itself." — R.  H. 
Hutton. 

"  There  is  one  other  source  of  the  extreme  fascination  of 
this  man's  writings.  A  plain  word  for  it  would  be  concen- 
tration or  pertinacity ;  but  in  the  lurid  haze  under  which  his 
genius  so  often  works,  it  becomes  something  for  which  we 
really  want  a  name.  Perhaps  we  might  call  it  a  fatality  of 
method  which  carries  an  almost  awfully  impersonal  look  with 
it.  When  Judge  Pyncheon  sits  dead  in  his  chair  in  the  dark 
room  all  night,  and  the  genius  of  the  author,  through  all 
that  most  terrible  time,  walks  round  and  round  him  in  the 
gloom,  gradually  closing  in  on  the  solemn  fact  that  you 
well  know  all  the  while,  you  feel  with  a  shudder  that  this  bad 
man  is  not  only  dead,  he  is  dead — dead — fatally  dead,  so  to 
speak.  Now,  the  movement  of  Hawthorne  as  a  narrator  is 
always  of  this  kind.  He  gradually  closes  in  upon  his  idea ; 
but  as  you  feel  his  imagination  is  doing  this  spontaneously, 
the  effect  is  like  that  of  some  preternatural  fatality." — 
M.  Browne. 

"  His  relentless  fancy  seemed  to  seek  a  sin  that  was  hope- 
less, a  cruel  despair  that  no  faith  could  throw  off." — George 
William  Curtis. 

"  Instead  of  the  old  Puritan  speculations  about  predestina- 
tion and  free-will,  he  dwells  upon  the  transmission  by  natural 
laws  of  an  hereditary  curse  and  upon  the  strange  blending  of 


748  HAWTHORNE 

good  and  evil  which  may  cause  sin  to  be  an  awakening  im- 
pulse in  a  human  soul." — Leslie  Stephen. 
'  "  The  bracing  influence  of  quietude,  so  essential  to  his  well- 
being,  fascinates  him,  and  he  cannot  shake  off  its  influence  so 
far  as  to  enter  actively  and  for  personal  interests  into  any  of 
the  common,  pursuits,  even  of  the  man  who  makes  a  business 
of  literature.  ...  He  retires  in  profound  sorrow,  ac- 
knowledging that  earth  holds  nothing  perfect,  that  his  dream 
of  the  ideal  beings  leading  an  ideal  life,  which,  in  spite  of 
the  knowledge  of  evil,  he  has  been  cherishing  for  so  many 
years,  is  a  dream  to  be  fulfilled  in  the  hereafter  alone." — 
H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  Was  it  not  well  that  one — 

One  if  no  more — should  meditate  alool, 
Though  not  for  naught  the  time's  heroic  quarrel 
For  what  men  rush  to  do,  and  what  is  done  ?  ' ' 

— E.  C.  Stedman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Thus  ever  does  the  gross  fatality  of  earth  exult  in  its  invari- 
able triumph  over  the  immortal  essence  which,  in  this  dim  sphere 
of  half  development,  demands  the  completeness  of  a  higher 
state." — Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse. 

"  How  strange,  indeed !  Man  had  marked  this  woman's  sin 
with  a  scarlet  letter,  which  had  such  potent  and  disastrous  effi- 
cacy that  no  human  sympathy  could  reach  her  save  it  were  sinful 
like  herself.  ...  By  the  first  step  awry  thou  didst  plant  the 
germ  of  evil ;  but  since  that  moment  all  has  been  a  dark  ne- 
cessity."— The  Scarlet  Letter. 

"The  perception  of  an  infinite  shivering  solitude,  amid  which 
we  cannot  come  close  enough  to  human  beings  to  be  warmed 
by  them,  and  where  they  turn  to  cold,  chilly  shapes  of  mist,  is 
one  of  the  most  forlorn  results  of  any  accident,  misfortune,  crime, 
or  peculiarity  of  character  that  puts  an  individual  ajar  with  the 
world." — Italian  Notes. 

"  '  I  perceive,'  said  the  Man  of  Intelligence,  examining  it  more 


HAWTHORNE  749 

closely,  '  that  this  is  the  Pearl  of  Great  Price.'  .  .  .  '  Pardon 
me,'  rejoined  the  Intelligencer,  calmly,  '  you  ask  what  is  beyond 
my  duty.  This  pearl,  as  you  well  know,  is  held  on  a  peculiar 
tenure,  and  having  once  let  it  escape  from  your  keeping,  you 
have  no  greater  claim  to  it — nay,  not  so  great — as  any  other  per- 
son. I  cannot  give  it  back.'  " — The  Intelligence  Office. 

"  Hence,  too,  might  be  drawn  a  weighty  lesson  from  the  little 
regarded  truth,  that  the  act  of  the  passing  generation  is  the  germ 
which  may  and  must  produce  good  or  evil  fruit  in  a  far  distant 
time  ;  that,  together  with  the  seed  of  the  merely  temporary  crop, 
which  mortals  term  expediency,  they  inevitably  sow  the  acorns 
of  a  more  enduring  growth,  which  may  darkly  overshadow  their 
posterity." — House  of  the  Seven  Gables. 

"  Would  that  I  had  a  folio  to  write  instead  of  an  article  of  a 
dozen  pages.  Then  might  I  exemplify  how  an  influence,  beyond 
our  control,  lays  its  strong  hand  on  every  deed  which  we  do,  and 
weaves  its  consequences  into  an  iron  tissue  of  necessity." — 
Twice-Told  Tales. 

5.  Sly  Humor. — "Observe,  now,  the  vital  office  of  humor 
in  Hawthorne's  thought.  It  gleams  out  upon  us  from  behind 
many  of  the  gravest  of  his  conceptions,  like  the  silver  side  of 
a  dark  leaf  turning  in  the  wind.  Wherever  the  concretion  of 
guilt  is  most  adamantine,  there  he  lets  his  fine  slender  jet  of 
humor  play  like  a  lambent  fire,  until  the  dark  mass  crum- 
bles, and  the  choragos  of  the  tragedy  begins  his  mournful 
yet  hopeful  chant  among  the  ruins." — G.  P.  Lathrop. 

"Through  all  this  intensity  of  suffering  [in  'The  Scarlet 
Letter'],  through  this  blackness  of  narrative,  there  is  ever  run- 
ning a  vein  of  drollery.  As  Hawthorne  himself  says,  a  lively 
sense  of  the  humorous  again  stole  in  among  the  solemn  phan- 
toms of  her  [Hester's]  thought.  He  is  always  laughing  at 
something  with  his  weird  mocking  spirit.  .  .  .  Through 
it  all  there  is  a  touch  of  burlesque — not  as  to  the  suffering  of 
the  sufferers  but  as  to  the  great  question  whether  it  signifies 
much  in  what  way  we  suffer,  whether  by  crushing  sorrows  or 
little  things." — Anthony  Trollope. 


750  HAWTHORNE 

"  He  had  humor,  and  sometimes  humor  of  a  delicious 
kind ;  but  this  sunshine  of  the  soul  was  but  sunshine  breaking 
through,  or  lighting  up,  a  sombre  and  ominous  cloud." — £-. 
P.  Whipple. 

"  Hawthorne's  humour  is  partly  of  the  same  root  as  his 
melancholy,  springing  from  slow,  close,  inquisitive  scrutiny  of 
the  paradoxes  of  life,  the  humour  which  is  quite  as  much  true 
criticism  as  true  humour." — R.  If.  Hutton. 

"  Hawthorne  was  able  to  tread  in  that  magic  circle  only 
by  an  exquisite  refinement  of  taste  and  by  a  delicate  sense 
of  humour,  which  is  the  best  preservative  against  all  extrava- 
gance."— Leslie  Stephen. 

"  Hawthorne  with  all  his  pensiveness  and  gravity  is  said  to 
have  been  of  a  cheerful  mood.  .  .  .  His  essays  contain 
a  vein  of  the  richest  humor." — -J.  A.  Symonds. 

1 '  [His  humor  in  the  Custom  -  house  is]  like  the  war- 
bling of  bobolinks  before  a  thunder  -storm.  ...  A  lam- 
bent light  of  delicate  humor  played  over  all  Hawthorne  said 
in  the  confidence  of  familiarity." — George  William  Curtis. 

"  He  had  humor ;  not  facetiousness  or  buffoonery — a  forced 
or  imported   brilliance — but  innate  humor,  that  plays  about 
the  subject  like  the  lambent  flames  of  incandescent  coal."- 
Julian  Hawthorne. 

"Occasional  touches  of  humor,  introduced  with  exquisite 
tact,  relieve  the  grave  undertone  of  the  narrative,  and  form 
vivacious  and  quaint  images  which  might  readily  be  trans- 
ferred to  canvas — so  effectively  are  they  drawn  in  words. 
When  intent  upon  the  quaint  or  characteristic  in 
life  he  has  a  humor  as  zestful  as  Lamb." — H.  T.  Tuckennan. 

"  He  is  to  a  considerable  degree  ironical — this  is  a  part  of 
his  charm — part  even,  one  may  say,  of  his  brightness  ;  but  he 
is  neither  bitter  nor  cynical.  .  .  .  On  the  whole,  Haw- 
thorne's observation  has  a  smile  in  it  oftener  than  may  at  first 
appear. " — Henry  James. 


HAWTHORNE  75 1 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  How  can  we  elevate  our  history  of  retribution  for  sin  of  long 
ago  when,  as  one  of  our  most  prominent  figures,  we  are  com- 
pelled to  introduce,  not  a  young  and  lovely  woman,  nor  even  the 
stately  remains  of  beauty  storm-shattered  by  affliction,  but  a 
gaunt,  sallow,  rusty-jointed  maiden  in  a  long-waisted  silk  gown, 
and  with  a  strange  horror  of  a  turban  on  her  head  ?  " — The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables. 

"  On  this  particular  forenoon,  so  excessive  was  the  warmth  of 
Judge  Pyncheon's  kindly  aspect,  that  (such,  at  least,  was  the 
rumor  about  town)  an  extra  passage  of  the  water-carts  was  found 
essential,  in  order  to  lay  the  dust  occasioned  by  so  much  extra 
sunshine  !  " — Hoiise  of  the  Seven  Gables. 

"  The  hens  were  now  scarcely  larger  than  pigeons,  and  had  a 
queer,  rusty,  withered  aspect  and  a  gouty  kind  of  movement  and 
a  sleepy  and  melancholy  tone  throughout  all  the  variations  of 
their  clucking  and  cackling.  It  was  evident  that  the  race  had 
degenerated,  like  many  a  noble  race  besides,  in  consequence  of 
too  strict  a  watchfulness  to  keep  it  pure.  These  feathered  people 
had  existed  too  long  in  their  distinct  variety,  a  fact  of  which  the 
present  representatives,  judging  by  their  lugubrious  deportment, 
seemed  to  be  aware.  They  kept  themselves  alive,  unquestion- 
ably, and  laid  now  and  then  an  egg  and  hatched  a  chicken,  not 
for  any  pleasure  of  their  own,  but  that  the  world  might  not 
absolutely  lose  what  had  once  been  so  admirable  a  breed  of 
fowls." — The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables. 

6.  Morbidness — Melancholy.—"  The  sort  of  morbid- 
ness that,  so  to  speak,  is  not  individual  in  its  causes  nor  strict- 
ly personal  in  its  expression  ;  the  sort  of  morbidness  which  is 
the  accumulation  of  generations  and  which  makes  a  nature 
unhealthy  by  reason  of  the  peculiar  form  which  its  ancestors' 
perhaps  healthy  activity  has  impressed  upon  it ;  this,  it  seems 
plain,  is  a  morbidness  that  Hawthorne  had.  His  gifts  and 
graces  of  imagination  and  fancy  appear  as  if  dominated  by 
some  spell  compelling  them  to  face  always  the  sinfulness  of 
sin.  to  busy  themselves  with  the  spiritual  depths,  not  of  man, 


752  HAWTHORNE 

but  of  man  under  the  curse  of  total  depravity  and  fore-or- 
dained to  wrath — with  the  depths  of  human  nature  in  corrup- 
tion. It  becomes  impossible,  then,  to  dissociate  his  mor- 
bidness from  his  genius  and  to  avoid  saying  that  his  morbid- 
ness constitutes  his  genius,  and  that,  in  his  case,  in  no  other, 
'  genius  is  a  disease.'  '  —J.  R.  Dennett. 

"  This  [a  quotation  from  his  journal]  seems  to  me  to  ex- 
press very  well  the  weak  side  of  Hawthorne's  work — his  con- 
stant mistrust  and  suspicion  of  the  society  that  surrounded 
him,  his  exaggerated,  painful,  morbid  national  consciousness. 
The  same  tendency  of  imagination,  in  perhaps  quite 
as  characteristic  form  [as  in  Rappacini's  daughter]  is  shown 
in  the  tale  called  '  The  Birth-mark,'  which  turns  on  the  mor- 
bid horrors  inspired  by  a  slight  birth-mark  on  the  cheek  of  a 
beautiful  woman  in  the  mind  of  her  husband.  .  .  .  But 
it  is  in  the  more  elaborate  tales  that  Hawthorne  has  most  scope 
at  once  for  the  relieving  elements  which  these  morbid  in- 
terests .  .  .  especially  require  and  for  the  fuller  develop- 
ment and  justification,  so  to  say,  of  emotions  so  subtle  and  un- 
healthy. ...  It  may  be  well  that  Hawthorne  believed  no 
more  of  the  so-called  science  of  mesmeric  and  spiritual  phe- 
nomena than  the  most  acute  and  incredulous  men  of  his  so- 
ciety. But  that  he  was  especially  fascinated  by  these  morbid 
phenomena,  as  by  all  morbid  phenomena  of  human  nature, 
is  proved  by  a  vast  number  of  passages  in  his  various  note- 
books as  well  as  by  the  subjects  of  his  novels.  ...  It 
would  be  very  unjust  to  Hawthorne  to  represent  him  as  in  any 
degree  addicted,  like  Edgar  Poe,  to  the  invention  of  mon- 
strosities and  horrors.  I  only  mean  that  his  genius  naturally 
leads  him  to  the  analysis  and  representation  of  certain  outlying 
moral  anomalies,  which  are  not  the  anomalies  of  ordinary  evil 
and  sin,  but  have  a  certain  chilling  unnaturalness  of  their  own. 
.  .  .  And  when  he  delineates  what  is  revolting,  one  of  the 
main  elements  that  makes  it  so  revolting  is  the  Manichean  in- 
carnation of  some  noble  and  half-angelic  affection  in  a  malig- 


HAWTHORNE  753 

nant  body  of  evil,  from  which  it  vainly  seeks  to  be  divorced. 
.  .  .  Both  the  novels  and  the  note-books  testify  to  their 
author's  melancholy,  though  hardly  melancholy  of  a  deep 
order.  It  is  the  melancholy  of  a  man  with  a  rather  slow  flow 
of  blood  in  his  veins  and  almost  a  horror  of  action  rather 
than  any  deep  melancholy  which  speaks  in  him." — R.  H. 
Hutton. 

"He  creates  a  melancholy  which  amounts  to  remorse  in 
the  minds  of  his  readers.  There  falls  upon  them  a  conviction 
of  some  unutterable  woe,  which  is  not  altogether  dispelled  till 
other  books  and  other  incidents  have  had  their  effects." — 
Anthony  Trollope, 

"  He  had  spiritual  insight,  but  it  did  not  penetrate  to  the 
sources  of  spiritual  joy  ;  and  his  deepest  glimpses  of  truth 
were  calculated  rather  to  sadden  than  to  inspire." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"It  is  impossible,  we  should  think,  to  read  him  without 
becoming  sadder  if  not  wiser — in  spite  of  an  assumed  air  of 
gaillardise  and  a  cheery  moral  tacked  now  and  then  to  a  sor- 
rowful parable,  he  is  essentially  sad-hearted,  and  confirms  any 
similar  tendency  in  his  readers.  .  .  .  With  special  abil- 
ity to  depict  exceptional  modes  of  human  nature  is  conjoined 
special  temptation  to  linger  amid  what  is  morbid  and  to 
court  intimacy  with  whatever  deviates  from  the  dull  standard 
of  conventionalism  and  gives  to  distortion  and  oddity  the 
preference  over  harmonic  unity." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  This  world,  it  seemed,  had  naught  for  such  as  he — 
For  one  who,  in  his  heart's  deep  wilderness 
Shrunk  darkling,  and,  whatever  wind  might  blow, 
Found  no  quick  use  for  potent  hands  and  fain, 
No  chance  that  might  express 
To  human-kind  the  thoughts  that  moved  him  so. 
Oh,  deem — deem  not  those  long  years  were  quite  in  vain." 

— R.  C.  Stedman. 
48 


754  HAWTHORNE 

"  The  sensitive  youth  was  a  recluse,  upon  whose  imagina- 
tion had  fallen  the  gloomy  mystery  of  Puritan  life  and  char- 
acter. .  .  .  Devoted  all  day  to  lonely  reverie  and  mus- 
ing upon  the  obscurer  passages  of  the  life  whose  monuments 
he  constantly  encountered,  that  musing  became  inevitably 
morbid.  ...  He  beholds  and  describes  the  generous 
impulses  of  humanity  with  sceptical  courtesy  rather  than  with 
hopeful  cordiality.  .  .  .  The  tranquil  and  pervasive  sad- 
ness of  all  his  writings,  the  kind  of  heart-ache  that  they  leave 
behind,  seems  to  spring  from  the  fact  that  his  nature  was  re- 
lated to  the  moral  world  as  his  own  Donatello  was  to  the 
human.  .  .  .  There  are  many  gleams  upon  the  pages  [of 
'Twice-Told  Tales'],  but  a  strange,  melancholy  chill  per- 
vades the  book." — George  William  Curtis. 

Hawthorne  once  wrote  to  his  friend  Field,  "  I  wish  God 
had  given  me  the  faculty  of  writing  a  sunshiny  book." 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  It  was  that  heartsickness  which,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  we  may  all 
of  us  have  been  pure  enough  to  feel  once  in  our  lives,  but  the 
capacity  for  which  is  usually  exhausted  early,  and  perhaps  with  a 
single  agony.  .  .  .  The  character  of  our  individual  beloved 
one  having  invested  itself  with  all  the  attributes  of  right— that 
one  friend  being  to  us  the  symbol  and  representative  of  whatever 
is  good  and  true— when  he  falls  the  effect  is  almost  as  if  the  sky 
fell  with  him,  bringing  down  in  chaotic  ruin  the  columns  that 
upheld  our  faith." — The  Marble  Faun. 

"  A  happy  person  is  such  an  unaccustomed  and  holy  creature 
in  this  sad  world  !  .  .  .  With  only  an  inconsiderable  change, 
the  gladdest  objects  and  existences  become  the  saddest ;  hope 
fading  into  disappointment ;  joy  darkening  into  grief,  and  festal 
splendor  into  funereal  darkness — and  all  evolving  as  their  moral 
a  grim  identity  between  gay  things  and  sorrowful !  Only  give 
them  a  little  time,  and  they  turn  out  to  be  just  alike." — The 
Marble  Faun. 

"  Even  as  he  spoke  the  door  was  gerrtly  and  slowly  thrust  ajar, 


HAWTHORNE  755 

affording  a  glimpse  of  the  slender  figure  of  a  young  girl,  who,  as 
she  timidly  entered,  seemed  to  bring  the  light  and  cheerfulness 
of  the  outer  atmosphere  into  the  somewhat  gloomy  apartment. 
We  know  not  her  errand  there,  nor  can  we  reveal  whether  the 
young  man  gave  up  his  heart  into  her  custody.  If  so,  the 
arrangement  was  neither  better  nor  worse  than  ninety-nine  cases 
out  of  a  hundred,  where  the  parallel  sensibilities  of  a  similar  age, 
importunate  affections,  and  the  easy  satisfaction  of  characters 
not  deeply  conscious  of  themselves,  supply  the  place  of  any 
profounder  sympathy." — The  Intelligence  Office. 

"  How  early  in  the  summer,  too,  the  prophecy  of  autumn 
comes  !  Earlier  in  some  years  than  in  others  ;  sometimes  even 
in  the  first  weeks  of  July.  There  is  no  other  feeling  like  what  is 
caused  by  this  faint,  doubtful,  yet  real  perception — if  it  be  not  a 
foreboding,  rather — of  the  year's  decay,  so  blessedly  sweet  and 
sad  in  the  same  breath.  .  .  .  Did  I  say  that  there  was  no 
feeling  like  it  ?  Ah,  but  there  is  a  half  acknowledged  melancholy 
like  to  this  when  we  stand  in  the  perfected  vigor  of  our  life  and 
feel  that  Time  has  now  given  us  all  his  flowers,  and  that  the  next 
work  of  his  never  idle  fingers  must  be  to  steal  them  one  by  one 
away." — Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse. 

7.  Delicate  Sensibility. — George  William  Curtis,  who 
knew  Hawthorne  well,  says:  "  He  was  so  sensitive  that  his 
look  and  manner  can  be  suggested  by  the  word  'glimmering.'  " 

"  And  his  the  gift  which  sees 
A  revelation  and  a  tropic  sign 
In  the  lone  passion-flower,  and  can  discover 
The  likeness  of  the  far  Antipodes, 
Though  but  a  leaf  is  stranded  from  the  brine ; 
His  the  fine  spirit  which  is  so  true  a  lover 
Of  sovran  Art  that  all  the  becks  of  life 
Allure  it  not  until  the  work  be  wrought." 

— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Nothing  could  be  more  accurate  and  sensitive  than  the 
brief  description  of  nature  in  his  works.  ...  He  shad- 


756  HAWTHORNE 

ows  forth  hints,  makes  signs,  whispers,  muses  aloud,  gives  the 
key-note  of  a  melody,  puts  us  on  a  track ;  in  a  word,  ad- 
dresses us  as  nature  does — that  is,  unostentatiously  and  with 
a  significance  not  to  be  realized  without  reverent  silence  and 
gentle  feeling ;  a  sequestration  from  bustle  and  material  care 
and  somewhat  of  the  meditative  insight  and  latent  sensibility 
in  which  his  themes  are  conceived  and  wrought  out." — H. 
T.  Tuckerman. 

11  There  is  perhaps  no  more  delicate  comment  on  the  ex- 
quisite sensibility  of  Hawthorne  than  this,  that  he  should  be 
so  open  to  climatic  influence  in  his  writing." — G.  P.  Lathrop. 

"  Hawthorne's  pure  and  delightful  fancies,  though  at  times 
they  may  have  led  us  too  far  from  the  healthy  contact  of 
every-day  interests,  never  leave  a  stain  upon  the  imagination, 
and  generally  succeed  in  throwing  a  harmonious  coloring 
upon  some  objects  in  which  we  had  previously  failed  to  rec- 
ognize the  beautiful." — Leslie  Stephen, 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Poor  Old  Earth !  What  I  should  chiefly  regret  in  her  de- 
struction would  be  that  very  earthliness  which  no  other  sphere  or 
state  of  existence  can  renew  or  compensate.  The  fragrance  of 
flowers  and  of  new-mown  hay  ;  the  genial  warmth  of  sunshine  and 
the  beauty  of  a  sunset  among  the  clouds  ;  .  .  .  the  delicious- 
ness  of  fruits  and  of  all  good  cheer ;  the  magnificence  of  moun- 
tains and  seas  and  cataracts  and  the  softer  charm  of  rural  scen- 
ery ;  even  the  fast-falling  snow  and  the  gray  atmosphere  through 
which  it  descends — all  these  and  innumerable  other  enjoyable 
things  of  the  earth  must  perish  with  her.  .  .  .  And  then  our 
mute  four-footed  friends  and  winged  songsters  of  our  woods! 
Might  not  it  be  lawful  to  regret  them,  even  in  the  hallowed 
groves  of  Paradise  ?  " — Hall  of  Fantasy. 

"  I  doubt  if  anybody  ever  does  really  see  a  mountain  who 
goes  for  the  set  and  sole  purpose  of  seeing  it.  Nature  will  not 
let  herself  be  seen  in  such  cases.  You  must  patiently  bide  her 
time  ;  and  by  and  by,  at  some  unforeseen  moment,  she  will 
quietly  and  suddenly  unveil  herself,  and  for  a  brief  space  allow 


HAWTHORNE  757 

you  to  look  right  into  the  heart  of  her  mystery." — English  Note- 
Book. 

"  What  a  sweet  reverence  is  that,  when  a  young  man  dreams 
his  mistress  a  little  more  than  mortal,  and  almost  chides  himself 
for  longing  to  bring  her  close  to  his  heart !  " — Marble  Faun. 

"  It  must  be  a  spirit  much  unlike  my  own  which  can  keep  it- 
self in  health  and  vigor  without  sometimes  stealing  from  the 
sultry  sunshine  of  the  world,  to  plunge  into  the  cool  bath  of  soli- 
tude. At  intervals,  and  not  infrequent  ones,  the  forest  and  the 
ocean  summon  me — one  with  the  roar  of  its  waves,  the  other  with 
the  murmur  of  its  boughs  — forth  from  the  haunts  of  men." — 
Twice-Told  Tales. 


8.  Vivid  Description  —  Picturesqueness — Fidel- 
ity.— "  Sometimes  they  [Hawthorne's  sketches]  are  purely 
descriptive  bits  of  Flemish  painting,  so  exact  and  arrayed  in 
such  mellow  colors  that  we  unconsciously  take  them  in  as  ob- 
jects of  sensitive  rather  than  imaginative  observation.  .  . 
In  truth  to  costume,  local  manners,  and  scenic  features  '  The 
Scarlet  Letter  '  is  as  reliable  as  the  best  of  Scott's  novels. 
So  life-like  in  the  minutiae  and  so  picturesque  in 
general  effect  are  these  sketches  of  still  life  that  they  are 
daguerreotyped  in  the  reader's  mind,  and  form  a  distinct  and 
changeless  background,  the  light  and  shade  of  which  give  ad- 
mirable effect  to  the  action  of  a  story.  .  .  .  Were  a  New 
England  Sunday  breakfast,  an  old  mansion,  an  easterly  town, 
or  the  morning  after  it  clears  ever  so  well  described  ? 
The  early  history  of  New  England  has  found  no  such  genial 
and  vivid  illustrations  as  his  pages  afford.  .  .  .  We  seem 
to  breathe  the  air  as  we  read  and  to  be  surrounded  by  the 
familiar  objects  of  a  New  England  town.  The  interior  of  the 
house  [of  the  Seven  Gables],  each  article  described  within  it, 
from  the  quaint  table  to  the  miniature  by  Mai  bone ;  every 
product  of  the  old  garden,  the  street  scenes  that  beguile  the  eyes 
of  poor  Clifford  as  he  looks  out  of  the  arched  window,  the  noble 
elm  and  the  ginger-bread  figures  at  the  little  shop  window — all 


758  HAWTHORNE 

have  the  significance  that  belongs  to  reality  when  seized  upon 
by  art.  In  these  details  we  have  the  truth,  simplicity,  and  ex- 
act imitation  of  the  Flemish  painters.  The  Old  Manse  and  the 
Custom  -  house  .  .  .  are  memorable  instances  of  this 
fidelity  in  the  details  of  local  and  personal  portraiture  and 
that  chaste  yet  deep  tone  of  coloring  which  secures  an  har- 
monious whole.  .  .  .  Nor  is  Hawthorne  less  successful 
in  those  pictures  that  are  drawn  exclusively  for  the  mind's  eye 
and  are  obvious  to  sensation  rather  than  to  actual  vision." — 
H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

"  To  read  his  historical  sketches  is  like  wandering  through 
old  portrait  galleries  or  walking  streets  that  have  long  disap- 
peared, with  quaint  old  houses  about  us  and  figures  in  the  an- 
tique garb  of  a  past  generation."— -J.  A.  Symonds. 

"  He  studied  minutely  and  portrayed  with  delicate  faith- 
fulness the  smallest  flower  beneath  his  feet,  the  faintest  bird  in 
the  distant  sky,  the  trivial  remark  or  the  seemingly  unimpor- 
tant act  of  the  person  described." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  He  virtually  offers  the  most  vivid  reflection  of  New  Eng- 
land life  that  has  found  its  way  into  literature." — Henry 
James. 

"  The  most  obvious  excellence  of  the  work  ['  The  Marble 
Faun']  is  the  vivid  truthfulness  of  its  descriptions  of  Italian 
life,  manners,  and  scenery.  .  .  .  Hawthorne  is  one  of 
those  true  observers  who  concentrate  in  observation  every 
power  of  their  minds.  He  has  accurate  sight  and  piercing 
insight.  .  .  .  We  might  quote  from  the  descriptive  por- 
tions of  the  work  a  hundred  pages  at  least  which  would  de- 
monstrate how  closely  accurate  observation  is  connected  with 
the  highest  powers  of  the  intellect  and  the  imagination." — 
E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  In  the  whole  literature  of  our  civil  strife  there  is  no  more 
vivid  description  than  this  [in  'Septimius  Felton  ']  of  the  way 
the  sounds  of  a  skirmish  pass  away  in  the  distance." — T.  W. 
Higginson. 


HAWTHORNE  759 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  On  every  side  the  seven  gables  pointed  sharply  toward  the 
sky,  and  presented  the  aspect  of  a  whole  sisterhood  of  edifices 
breathing  through  the  spiracles  of  one  chimney.  .  .  .  It  would 
be  an  omission,  trifling  indeed  but  unpardonable,  were  we  to  for- 
get the  green  moss  that  had  long  since  gathered  on  the  projec- 
tions of  the  windows  ;  nor  must  we  fail  to  direct  the  reader's  eye 
to  a  crop,  not  of  weeds  but  flower-shrubs,  which  were  growing 
aloft  in  the  air,  not  a  great  way  from  the  chimney,  in  the  nook 
between  two  of  the  gables.  They  were  called  Alice's  posies.1' 
— House  of  the  Seven  Gables. 

"  The  early  sunbeams  hovered  cheerfully  upon  the  tree  tops, 
beneath  which  two  weary  and  wounded  men  had  stretched  their 
limbs  the  night  before.  Their  bed  of  withered  oak  leaves  was 
strewn  upon  the  small  level  of  one  of  the  gentle  swells  by  which 
the  face  of  the  country  is  diversified.  The  mass  of  granite, 
rearing  its  smooth,  flat  surface  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  above  their 
heads,  was  not  unlike  a  gigantic  gravestone,  upon  which  the 
veins  seemed  to  form  an  inscription  in  forgotten  characters." 
—  The  Intelligence  Office. 

"Above  the  draw  there  was  a  broad  and  deep  pool,  one  side 
of  which  was  bordered  by  a  precipitous  wall  of  rocks,  as  smooth 
as  if  hewn  out  and  squared  and  piled  one  upon  another,  above 
which  rose  the  forest.  On  the  other  side  there  was  still  a  gently 
shelving  bank,  and  the  shore  was  covered  with  tall  trees,  among 
which  I  particularly  remarked  a  stately  pine,  wholly  devoid  of 
bark,  rising  white  in  aged  and  majestic  ruin,  thrusting  out  its 
barkless  arms.  It  must  have  stood  there  in  death  many  years, 
its  own  ghost.  Above  the  dam  the  brook  flowed  through  the 
forest,  a  glistening  and  babbling  water-path,  illuminated  by  the 
sun,  which  sent  its  rays  almost  straight  along  its  course." — The 
American  Note  Book. 

9.  Natural  Simplicity — Clearness. — "  Hawthorne  not 
only  writes  English,  but  the  sweetest,  simplest,  and  clearest 
English  that  ever  has  been  made  the  vehicle  of  equal  depth, 
variety,  and  subtlety  of  thought  and  emotion.  .  .  .  He 
contrives  to  embody  in  his  simple  style  qualities  which  would 


760  HAWTHORNE 

almost  excuse  the  verbal  extravagance  of  Carlyle." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  His  utterance  is  singularly  clear  and  simple.  His  style 
only  rises  above  the  colloquial  in  the  sustained  order  of  its 
flow ;  the  terms  are  natural  and  fitly  chosen.  Indeed,  a  care- 
less reader  is  liable  continually  to  lose  sight  of  his  meaning 
and  beauty  from  the  entire  absence  of  pretension  in  his  style. 
The  style  of  Hawthorne  is  wholly  unevasive;  he  re- 
sorts to  no  tricks  of  rhetoric  or  verbal  ingenuity  ;  language  is 
to  him  a  crystal  medium  through  which  to  let  us  see  the  play 
of  his  humor,  the  glow  of  his  sympathy,  and  the  truth  of  his 
observation." — H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

""Another  characteristic  of  this  writer  is  the  exceeding 
beauty  of  his  style.  It  is  as  clear  as  running  waters  are.  In- 
deed, he  uses  words  as  mere  stepping-stones,  upon  which,  with 
a  free  and  youthful  bound,  his  spirit  crosses  and  recrosses  the 
bright  and  rushing  stream  of  thought." — Longfellow. 

"  That  limpid  flow  of  expression,  never  laboring,  never 
shallow,  but  moving  on  with  tranquil  force,  clear  to  the 
depths  of  its  profoundest  thought,  shows  itself  with  all  its 
consummate  perfections." — O.  W.  Holmes. 

"There  is  no  attempt  at  effect.  All  is  quiet,  thoughtful, 
subdued.  Yet  this  repose  may  exist  simultaneously  with  high 
originality  of  thought ;  and  Mr.  Hawthorne  has  demonstrated 
the  fact." — Poe. 

"  There  was  no  conception  so  daring  that  he  shrank  from 
attempting  it,  and  none  that  he  could  not  so  master  as  to  state 
it,  if  he  pleased,  in  terms  of  monosyllables." — T.  W.  -Ffiggin- 
son. 

"  Hawthorne  had  in  his  composition,  contemplator  and 
dreamer  as  he  was,  an  element  of  simplicity  and  rigidity,  a 
something  plain,  masculine,  and  sensible.  .  .  .  The  main 
impression  produced  by  his  observations  is  that  of  simplicity. 
They  spring  not  only  from  an  unsophisticated  but  from  an  ex- 
ceedingly natural  mind.  Never,  surely,  was  a  man  of  literary 


HAWTHORNE  761 

genius  less  a  man  of  letters.  He  looks  at  things  as  little  as 
possible  in  that  composite  historic  light  which  forms  the  at- 
mosphere of  many  imaginations." — Henry  James. 

"In  Hawthorne's  college  themes  and  in  his  renderings  from 
the  ancient  classics  there  was  even  then  the  promise  of  that 
matchless  simplicity  and  brilliancy  of  style  in  which  his  later 
works  were  written  ;  a  style  so  pure  that  it  seems  a  new  ele- 
ment, in  which  the  airiest  creatures  of  the  imagination  may 
play  at  will." — -John  Addington  Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  children  dwelt  in  a  city,  and  had  no  wider  play-place 
than  a  little  garden  before  the  house,  divided  by  a  white  fence 
from  the  street,  and  with  a  pear-tree  and  two  or  three  plum-trees 
overshadowing  it  and  some  rose-bushes  just  in  front  of  the  parlor 
windows.  The  trees  and  shrubs,  however,  were  now  leafless,  and 
their  twigs  were  enveloped  in  the  light  snow,  which  thus  made  a 
kind  of  wintry  foliage,  with  here  and  there  a  pendant  icicle  for 
the  fruit." —  The  Snow  Image. 

"  The  study  had  three  windows,  set  with  little  old-fashioned 
panes  of  glass,  each  with  a  crack  across  it.  The  two  on  the 
western  side  looked,  or  rather  peeped,  between  the  willow 
branches,  down  into  the  orchard,  with  glimpses  of  the  river 
through  the  trees.  The  third,  facing  northward,  commanded  a 
broader  view  of  the  river,  at  a  spot  where  its  hitherto  obscure 
waters  gleam  forth  into  the  light  of  history." — Mosses  from  an 
Old  Manse. 

"  And  now  we  are  seated  by  the  brisk  fireside  of  an  old  farm- 
house— the  same  fire  that  glimmers  so  faintly  among  my  rem- 
iniscences at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter.  There  we  sat  with 
the  snow  melting  out  of  our  hair  and  beards  and  our  faces  all 
ablaze  with  the  past  inclemency  and  present  warmth.  It  was, 
indeed,  a  right  good  fire  that  we  found  waiting  us,  built  up  of 
great  rough  logs  and  knotty  limbs  and  splintered  fragments  of  an 
oak-tree  such  as  farmers  are  wont  to  keep  for  their  own  hearths." 
—  The  Blithedale  Romance. 

"  For  often  as  he  sat  waiting  for  her  by  the  margin  of  the 
spring,  she  would  suddenly  fall  down  around  him  a  shower  of 


762  HAWTHORNE 

sunny  raindrops,  with  a  rainbow  glancing  through  them,  and 
forthwith  gather  herself  up  into  the  likeness  of  a  beautiful  girl, 
laughing — or  was  it  the  warble  of  the  rill  over  the  pebbles — to 
see  the  youth's  amazement." — The  Marble  Faun. 


10.  Idealism — Romanticism. — Hawthorne  has  been 
well  called  "a  born  lover  of  romance."  In  his  method  he 
was  an  idealist ;  he  idealized  the  real. 

"I  may,  perhaps,  accept  a  phrase  of  which  Hawthorne 
himself  was  fond — '  the  moonlight  oT  romance ' — and  compel 
it  to  explain  something  of  the  secret  of  his  characteristic  gen- 
ius. If  the  objects  illuminated  were  not  real  and  familiar, 
the  light  would  not  seem  so  mysterious  ;  it  is  the  pale  uniform 
tint,  the  loss  of  color  and  retail,  and  yet  the  vivid  outline 
and  the  strong  shadow  which  produce  what  Hawthorne  calls 
'  the  moonlight  of  romance.'  " — R.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Was  it  not  a  thing  to  weep  over  that  a  man  so  keenly 
alive  to  every  picturesque  influence,  so  anxious  to  invest  his 
work  with  the  enchanted  haze  of  romantic  association,  should 
be  confined  to  middle  age  amongst  the  bleak  granite  rocks 
and  the  half-baked  civilization  of  New  England?" — Leslie 
Stephen. 

"  The  imagination  is  a  wayward  faculty,  and  writers  largely 
endowed  with  it  have  acknowledged  that  they  could  expatiate 
with  confidence  only  upon  themes  hallowed  by  distance. 
.  .  .  But  to  clothe  a  familiar  scene  with  ideal  interest 
and  to  exalt  things  to  which  our  senses  are  daily  accustomed 
into  the  region  of  imaginative  beauty  and  genuine  sentiment, 
requires  an  extraordinary  power  of  abstraction  and  concentra- 
tive  thought.  .  .  .  Yet  with  a  calm  gaze,  a  serenity  and 
fixedness  of  musing  that  no  outward  bustle  can  disturb  and 
no  power  of  custom  render  hackneyed,  Hawthorne  takes  his 
stand  and  loses  all  consciousness  of  himself  and  the  present  in 
transferring  its  features  and  atmosphere  to  canvas. 
The  imaginative  grace  lends  itself  .quite  as  aptly  to  redeem 


HAWTHORNE  763 

and  glorify  homely  fact  in  the  plastic  hands  of  the  author. 
A  rare  and  most  attractive  quality  of  Hawthorne  is  this  artis- 
tic use  of  familiar  materials.  ...  In  our  view  the  most 
remarkable  trait  in  his  writings  is  this  harmonious  blending 
of  the  common  and  familiar  in  the  outward  world  with  the 
mellow  and  vivid  tints  of  his  own  imagination.  .  .  . 
The  scenery,  tone,  and  personages  of  '  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables  '  are  imbued  with  a  local  authenticity  which  is  not  for 
an  instant  impaired  by  the  imaginative  charm  of  romance." 
— H.  T.  Tuckerman. 

' '  In  Hawthorne  the  whole  class  of  little  descriptive  effu- 
sions directed  upon  common  things  .  .  .  have  a  greater 
charm  than  there  is  any  warrant  for  in  their  substance.  The 
charm  is  made  up  of  the  spontaneity,  the  personal  quality  of 
the  fancy  that  plays  through  them,  its  mingled  simplicity  and 
subtlety,  its  purity  and  its  bonhomie." — Henry  James. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  good  lady  could  look  all  over  the  garden  and  see  every- 
thing and  everybody  in  it.  And  what  do  you  think  she  saw 
there  ?  Violet  and  Peony,  of  course,  her  own  darling  children. 
Ah,  but  whom  or  what  did  she  besides  ?  Why,  if  you  will  be- 
lieve me,  there  was  a  small  figure  of  a  girl,  dressed  all  in  white, 
with  rose-tinged  cheeks  and  ringlets  of  golden  hue,  playing 
about  the  garden  with  the  children  ! " —  The  Snow  Image. 

"  As  we  threaded  the  streets,  I  remember  how  the  buildings 
on  either  side  seemed  to  press  too  closely  upon  us,  insomuch  that 
our  mighty  hearts  found  barely  room  enough  to  throb  between 
them.  The  snow-fall,  too,  looked  inexpressibly  dreary  (I  had 
almost  called  it  dingy),  coming  down  through  an  atmosphere  of 
city  smoke  and  alighting  on  the  sidewalk  only  to  be  moulded 
into  the  impress  of  somebody's  patched  boot  or  overshoe." — 
The  Blithedale  Romance. 

"  Houses  of  any  antiquity  in  New  England  are  so  invariably 
possessed  with  spirits  that  the  matter  seems  hardly  worth  allud- 
ing to.  Our  ghost  used  to  heave  deep  sighs  in  a  particular  cor- 


764  HAWTHORNE 

ner  of  the  parlor,  and  sometimes  rustled  paper,  as  if  he  were 
turning  over  a  sermon  in  the  long  entry — where,  nevertheless,  he 
was  invisible,  in  spite  of  the  bright  moonshine  that  fell  through 
the  eastern  window." — Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse. 

"He  descended  among  the  foliage,  waiting  for  her  to  come 
close  to  the  trunk,  and  then  suddenly  dropped  from  an  im- 
pending bough,  and  alighted  at  her  side  more  as  if  the  sway- 
ing of  the  branches  had  let  a  ray  of  sunlight  through.  The 
same  ray  likewise  glimmered  among  the  gloomy  meditations 
that  encompassed  Miriam,  and  lit  up  the  pale,  dark  beauty  of 
her  face,  while  it  responded  pleasantly  to  Donatello's  glance." 
— The  Marble  Faun, 


II.  Self-Reflection. — "His  mind  is  reflected  in  his 
style  as  a  face  is  reflected  in  a  mirror,  and  the  latter  does  not 
give  back  its  image  with  less  appearance  of  effort  than  the 
former."—^.  P.  Whipple. 

"  There  never  was  a  man  more  shrinkingly  retiring,  yet 
surely  was  an  author  never  more  naively  frank.  He  is  willing 
that  you  should  know  all  that  a  man  may  fairly  reveal  of  him- 
self. The  great  interior  story  he  does  not  tell,  of  course,  but 
the  introduction  to  the  'Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,'  [etc.] 
are  as  intimate  and  explicit  chapters  of  autobiography  as  can 
be  found." — George  William  Curtis. 

"  There  is  probably  no  writer  whose  personality  seems  to 
us  so  largely  mingled  with  his  productions  as  Hawthorne. 
In  truth,  the  man  and  his  work  are  inseparable  in  our  minds. 
From  this  we  conclude  that  few  writers  have  had 
such  power  of  self-absorption  in  their  own  creations  as  Haw- 
thorne had,  and  that  it  is  for  this  reason  his  strong  individ- 
uality is  so  indelibly  stamped  upon  his  characters." — S.  A. 
Drake. 

"  His  stories  are,  in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word,  autobio- 
graphical ;  and  with  repeated  opportunities  for  cultivating  his 
acquaintance  by  direct  intercourse,  we  have  learned  from  his 
books  immeasurably  more  of  his  mental  history,  tastes,  ten- 


HAWTHORNE  765 

dencies,  sympathies,  and  opinions  than  we  should  have  known 
had  we  enjoyed  his  daily  concourse  for  a  lifetime.  Diffident 
and  reserved  as  to  the  habitudes  of  the  outer  man,  yet  singu- 
larly communicative  in  disposition  and  desire,  he  takes  his 
public  for  his  confidant,  and  betrays  to  thousands  of  eyes  likes 
and  dislikes,  whims  and  reveries,  veins  of  mirthful  and  serious 
reflection,  modes  of  feeling  both  healthful  and  morbid,  which 
it  would  be  beyond  his  power  to  disclose  through  the  ear,  even 
to  the  most  intimate  of  friends  or  the  dearest  of  kindred." — 
A.  P.  Peabody. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  greatest  obstacle  to  being  heroic  is  the  doubt  whether 
one  may  not  be  going  to  prove  one's-self  a  fool ;  the  truest  hero- 
ism is  to  resist  the  doubt  and  the  profoundest  wisdom,  to  know 
when  it  ought  to  be  resisted  and  when  to  be  obeyed." — The  Blithe- 
dale  Romance, 

"  There  is  a  piercing,  thrilling,  delicious  kind  of  regret  in  the 
idea  of  so  much  beauty  thrown  away,  or  only  enjoyable  at  its 
half- development,  in  winter  and  early  spring  and  never  to  be 
dwelt  amongst  as  the  home  scenery  of  any  human  being." —  The 
Marble  Faun. 

"  Happy  the  man  that  has  such  a  friend  beside  him  when  he 
comes  to  die !  How  many  men,  I  wonder,  does  one  meet  with, 
in  a  lifetime,  whom  he  would  choose  for  his  death-bed  com- 
panions !  " — The  Blithedale  Romance. 

"  Truth  often  finds  its  way  to  the  mind  close  muffled  in  robes 
of  sleep,  and  then  speaks  with  uncompromising  directness  of 
matters  in  regard  to  which  we  practice  an  unconscious  self- 
deception  during  our  waking  moments." — Mosses  from  an  Old 
Manse. 

12.  High  Moral  Tone.— "  In  all  of  Hawthorne's  works 
the  remarkable  and  characteristic  thing  is  the  incessant  action 
of  the  moral  faculty,  exquisitely  toned  by  the  moral  senti- 
ment."— E.  Benson. 

"  The  moral  ideal  which  Hawthorne  keeps  before  himself 


766  HAWTHORNE 

and  his  readers  throughout  all  his  works  is,  on  the  whole,  not 
only  pure  but  noble." — J?.  H.  Hutton. 

"  Referring  again  to  the  morbidly  intricate  and  repellent  in 
his  works,  we  must  not  forget  that  accompanying  these  there 
is  generally  a  touch  of  light  which  leads  the  mind  to  some 
higher  consideration  beyond  the  tangled  and  gloomy  web. 
Masked  under  the  modest  reserve  of  a  story-teller  the  noblest 
spirit  is  at  work,  and  a  beautiful  and  impressive  lesson  is  found 
enclosed  within  the  fancy.  .  .  .  In  his  search  for  the 
beautiful  he  found  more  truth  than  philosophers  in  seeking  the 
true." — T.  Bradfield. 

"  Hawthorne,  when  you  have  studied  him,  will  be  very 
precious  to  you.  .  .  .  He  will  have  enabled  you  to  feel 
yourself  an  inch  taller  during  the  process.  Something  of  the 
sublimity  of  the  transcendent,  something  of  the  mystery  of 
the  unfathomable,  something  of  the  brightness  of  the  celestial, 
will  have  attached  itself  to  you,  and  you  will  all  but  think  that 
you  might  live  to  be  sublime  and  revel  in  mingled  light  and 
mystery." — Anthony  Trollope. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"It  is  the  very  same  black  mud  out  of  which  the  yellow  lily 
makes  its  obscene  and  noisome  odor.  Thus  we  see  too,  in  the 
world,  that  some  persons  assimilate  only  what  is  ugly  and  evil 
from  the  same  moral  circumstances  which  supply  good  and 
beautiful  results — the  fragrance  of  celestial  flowers — to  the  daily 
life  of  others." — Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse. 

"  We  do  ourselves  wrong,  and  too  meanly  estimate  the  Holi- 
ness above  us,  when  we  deem  that  any  act  or  enjoyment,  good  in 
itself,  is  not  good  to  do  religiously." — The  Marble  Faun. 

"  It  behooves  men,  and  especially  men  of  benevolence,  to 
consider  well  what  they  are  about,  and,  before  acting  on  their 
philanthropic  purpose,  to  be  quite  sure  that  they  comprehend 
the  nature  and  all  the  relations  of  the  business  in  hand." — The 
Snow  Image. 


HAWTHORNE  767 

"  If  for  any  cause  I  were  bent  upon  sacrificing  every  earthly 
hope  as  a  peace-offering  towards  heaven,  I  would  make  the  wide 
world  my  cell  and  good  deeds  to  mankind  my  prayer.  Many 
penitent  men  have  done  this  and  found  peace  in  it. 
Has  there  been  an  unutterable  evil  in  your  young  life  ?  Then 
crowd  it  out  with  good,  or  it  will  lie  corrupting  there  forever,  and 
cause  your  capacity  for  better  things  to  partake  of  the  noisome 
corruption." — The  Marble  Faun. 


EMERSON,  1803-1882 

Biographical  Outline. — Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  born 
in  Boston,  Mass.,  May  25,  1803,  the  second  of  five  sons; 
father  pastor  of  the  "First  Church"  (Congregational)  of 
Boston;  Emerson  enters  the  public  grammar-school  in  1811 
and  the  Boston  Latin  School  soon  afterward ;  at  the  age  of 
eleven  (1814)  he  is  translating  Virgil  into  English  verse  ;  is 
fond,  also,  of  Greek,  history,  and  poetry  ;  composes  verses, 
and  thinks  highly  of  "  the  idle  books  under  the  bench  at  the 
Latin  School;"  enters  Harvard  College  in  1818  and  is 
graduated  in  1821  ;  receives  second  prize  for  English  com- 
position in  his  Senior  year,  but  gives  little  evidence  of  re- 
markable ability  while  in  college ;  joins  his  brother  Will- 
iam in  conducting  a  private  school  at  Boston,  and  later 
serves  as  principal  of  an  "Academy"  at  Chelmsford,  now 
a  part  of  Lowell ;  later  he  has  a  private  school  at  Cam- 
bridge ;  in  1823  he  begins  studying  for  the  ministry  un- 
der Dr.  Channing,  afterward  taking  a  course  of  lectures 
at  the  Harvard  Divinity  School ;  owing  to  trouble  with 
his  eyes,  he  takes  no  notes  at  the  Divinity  School,  and  is 
excused  from  the  examinations;  Emerson  wrote  later,  "If 
they  had  examined  me,  they  probably  would  not  have  let 
me  preach  at  all ;  "  in  1826  he  is  "approbated  to  preach  " 
by  the  Middlesex  Association  of  Ministers ;  visits  South  Caro- 
lina and  Florida  during  the  winter  of  1827-28,  and  preaches 
several  times  at  Charleston  and  other  places  ;  returning, 
preaches  temporarily  in  several  New  England  towns;  in  March, 
1829,  he  is  ordained  colleague  of  Dr.  Ware  in  the  "Second 
Church  "  of  Boston  ;  in  September,  1829,  he  marries  Ellen 

768 


EMERSON  769 

Louisa  Tucker,  who  dies  of  consumption  in  February,  1832  ; 
in  September,  1832,  he  preaches  his  famous  sermon  on  the 
Lord's  Supper,  expressing  his  scruples  against  administering 
the  same,  and  announcing  his  intention,  therefore,  to  resign 
his  office;  he  visits  Europe  in  1833,  making  a  tour  of  Sicily, 
Italy,  France,  and  England,  and  meeting  Coleridge,  Words- 
worth, Landor,  De  Quincey,  and  Carlyle;  he  becomes  a  res- 
ident of  Concord  in  the  summer  of  1834,  first  occupying  the 
"  Old  Manse"  of  Hawthorne's  novel;  begins  lecturing  in 
the  winter  of  1833-34,  giving  three  lectures  treating  of  his 
European  experiences  and  two,  respectively,  on  "Water" 
and  "  The  Relation  of  Man  to  the  Globe; "  during  1834  he 
lectures  on  Michael  Angelo,  Milton,  Luther,  George  Fox,  and 
Burke ;  the  first  two  of  these  lectures  were  published  in  the 
North  American  Review  for  1837-38;  Emerson  begins,  in 
May,  1834,  his  correspondence  with  Carlyle,  which  lasts  till 
1872  ;  in  September,  1835,  he  marries  Lydia  Jackson,  of 
Plymouth,  Mass.  ;  during  1835  he  gives  ten  lectures  in  Bos- 
ton on  "English  Literature;"  in  1836,  twelve  lectures  on 
"The  Philosophy  of  History:"  in  1837,  ten  lectures  on 
"Human  Culture;"  in  April,  1836,  he  writes  his  great 
"Concord  Hymn;"  till  1838  he  preaches  frequently  as  a 
"supply"  at  East  Lexington,  Mass.;  lectures  on  "War" 
in  1837  ;  publishes  anonymously  in  1836  his  small  book 
entitled  "Nature,"  which  Holmes  calls  "a  reflective  prose 
poem  ;  "  in  August,  1837,  delivers  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  ora- 
tion at  Cambridge,  entitled  "  The  American  Scholar  ;  "  July 
15,  1838,  delivers  at  Cambridge  his  Divinity  School  Address, 
which  excites  severe  criticism  by  theologians  and  raises  Em- 
erson "  to  the  importance  of  a  heretic  ;  "  in  1838-39  he  gives 
ten  lectures  on  "Human  Life,"  of  which  these  titles — Love, 
Demonology,  and  The  Comic — remain  in  his  published  works  ; 
he  contributes,  during  1838  and  1839,  the  poems  entitled 
"  The  Humble  Bee  "  and  "  To  the  Rhodora  "  to  the  Western 
Messenger  (both  poems  written  about  1823);  in  July,  1838, 
49 


7/0  EMERSON 

he  lectures  on  ' '  Literary  Ethics ' '  at  Dartmouth  College ;  in  De- 
cember, 1838,  Emerson  writes  to  Carlyle  that  he  has  £22,000 
drawing  six  per  cent,  interest,  besides  his  house,  his  two-acre 
lot,  and  an  income  of  $800  from  his  lectures;  in  August,  1841, 
he  lectures  at  Waterville,  Me.,  on  "  The  Method  of  Nature;  " 
writing  to  Carlyle  about  this  time,  Emerson  calls  himself 
"an  incorrigible  spouting  Yankee;  "  from  1840  to  1844 he 
contributes  more  than  thirty  articles,  including  some  of  his 
best  poems,  to  the  Dial,  first  edited  by  Margaret  Fuller  and 
later  (1842-44)  by  Emerson  himself;  during  1841  he  de- 
livers, also,  his  lectures  on  ' '  Man  the  Reformer, "  "  The 
Times,"  "The  Transcendentalist,"  and  "The  Conserva- 
tive ;  "  he  publishes,  during  1841,  his  first  volume  of  collected 
essays,  including  those  OH  History,  Self-Reliance,  Compen- 
sation, Spiritual  Laws,  Love,  Friendship,  Prudence,  Heroism, 
the  Over-Soul,  Circles,  and  Art;  in  February,  1842,  he  loses 
his  only  son,  then  five  years  old,  whom  he  mourns  to  Carlyle 
as  "  a  piece  of  love  and  sunshine  well  worth  my  watching 
from  morning  to  night ;  "  writes  "  A  Threnody  "  in  memory 
of  his  lost  child;  delivers  his  address  on'  "The  Young 
American  "  in  February,  1844,  and  publishes,  during  the 
same  year,  the  second  volume  of  his  essays  ;  lectures  also  on 
"  New  England  Reformers  "  during  1844;  publishes  the  first 
volume  of  his  poems  in  1846  ;  sails  a  second  time  for  Europe 
October  5,  1847  ;  after  spending  a  week  with  Carlyle,  Emer- 
son begins  a  lecture  tour,  arranged  for  him  by  the  Rev.  Alex- 
ander Ireland  ;  while  lecturing  in  Edinburgh  he  meets  Leigh 
Hunt,  De  Quincey,  and  many  other  notabilities ;  visits  Paris 
before  returning  to  America  ;  in  1850  publishes  selections  from 
his  English  lectures  under  the  title  "  Representative  Men ;  " 
during  1855  he  delivers  anti-slavery  addresses  in  New  York 
and  Boston,  favoring  the  purchase  of  the  slaves  by  the  Gov- 
ernment, and  also  favors  female  suffrage  in  an  address  before 
the  Woman's  Rights  Convention ;  in  1856  he  publishes 
"English  Traits;  "  in  1857  he  begins  to  contribute  to  the 


EMERSON  771 

Atlantic  Monthly,  then  just  established,  and  continues  till  his 
twenty-eighth  article  ;  he  helps  to  found  the  famous  "  Satur- 
day Club,"  which  includes  Hawthorne,  Motley,  Dana,  Lowell, 
Whipple,  Agassiz,  Holmes,  Longfellow,  and  others;  during 
1858  he  publishes  his  Essay  on  Persian  Poetry  ;  in  1859 
makes  his  greatest  public  speech — at  the  Burns  Festival  in 
Boston  ;  in  1860  he  publishes  the  "  Conduct  of  Life  ;  "  in 
1862  delivers  his  funeral  address  over  Thoreau  and  his 
Address  on  the  Emancipation  Proclamation;  during  1863 
publishes  "  The  Boston  Hymn,"  "  Voluntaries,"  and  many 
other  poems;  during  1866  writes  "Terminus,"  one  of  his 
noblest  poems;  during  1868,  1869,  and  1870  lectures  at  Har- 
vard University  on  "  The  Natural  History  of  the  Intellect ;" 
in  1870  publishes  "Society  and  Solitude;"  during  1871 
visits  California  in  company  with  Prof.  J.  B.  Thayer,  who 
afterward  publishes  an  account  of  the  journey  ;  Emerson  loses 
a  part  of  his  house  and  many  valuable  papers  by  fire  in  July, 
1872  ;  he  sails  the  third  time  for  Europe  in  October,  1872, 
in  company  with  his  daughter  Ellen,  going  as  far  as  Egypt ; 
during  his  absence  friends  subscribe  $11,620  for  the  rebuild- 
ing of  his  house  ;  he  returns  to  Concord  in  May,  1873, 
and  is  greeted  with  a  popular  ovation  ;  in  1874  he  publishes 
"Parnassus,"  a  collection  of  poems  from  British  and  American 
authors  ;  during  the  same  year  he  is  nominated  Lord  Rector 
of  the  University  of  Glasgow,  and  receives  five  hundred  votes 
against  seven  hundred  for  Disraeli,  which  he  calls  "  quijte  the 
fairest  laurel  that  has  ever  fallen  on  me;  "  in  April,  1875, 
he  delivers  an  address  at  Concord  on  the  one  hundredth  anni- 
versary of  "  the  fight  at  the  bridge;  "  before  the  shock  of  the 
fire  in  1872  his  mental  powers,  especially  his  memory,  began 
to  show  signs  of  failure;  in  March,  1878,  he  lectures  in  the 
Old  South  Church  at  Boston  on  "  Fortune  of  the  Republic; " 
in  May,  1879,  he  lectures  at  Harvard  University  on  "The 
Preacher;'"  in  1881  reads  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  a  paper  on  Carlyle;  in  February,  1882,  publishes  in 


772  EMERSON 

the  Century  an  article  on  "Superlatives;"  dies  at  Concord 
April  27,  1882. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON    EMERSON'S   STYLE. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "  American  Literature."     Boston,  1887,  Ticknor,  59-68 

and  234-259. 
Stedman,  E.  C,  "Poets  of  America."     Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  77,  etc. 
Sanborn,  F.    B.,  "The   Genius  and   Character  of  Emerson."     Boston, 

1885,  Osgood,  1-425. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Recollections."     Boston,  1878,  Ticknor,  119-154. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,   "Works."     Boston,  1891,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  I  : 

349-361. 
Arnold,    M.,    "Discourses  in  America."      London,    1885,    Macmillan, 

138-207. 
Morley,  J.,   "Critical  Miscellanies."     New  York,  1893,   Macmillan,  I: 

293-346. 
Powell,   T.,    "The  Living  Authors  of  America."      New  York,   1850, 

Stringer,  49~77- 
Welsh,  A.  H.,   "  Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1882, 

Griggs,  2:   523-542. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."     New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

l :  330-37i  and  2:   137-172. 

Birrell,  A.,  "  Obiter  Dicta. "     New  York,  1887,  Scribner,  2:  238-256. 
Gilfillan,   G.,  "Literary   Portraits."     Edinburgh,  1851-52,7.  Hogg,  i: 

195-208;  2:   120-135;  3:  328-336. 
Grimm,    H.,    "Literature."     Boston,    1886,    Cupples,    Upham  &  Co., 

1-44. 
Burroughs,  J.,  "Indoor  Studies."     Boston,  1893,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  128-162. 

Conway,  M.  D.,  "Emerson  at  Home  and  Abroad.''     Boston,  1882,  Os- 
good, 1-383. 
Alcott,  A.  B.,  "  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,"  etc.     Boston,  1882,  Cupples, 

Upham  &  Co.,  1-56. 
Woodbury,  C.  J.,  "Talks  with  Emerson."     New  York,  1890,  Baker  & 

Taylor,  1-177. 

James,  H.,  "Partial  Portraits."     New  York,  1888,  Macmillan,  1-34. 
Guernsey,  A.   H.,   "Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,   Philosopher    and    Poet." 

New  York,  1881,  Appleton,  1-327. 
Hawthorne,}.,  "  Confessions  and  Criticisms."     Boston,  1887,  Ticknor, 

186-217. 


EMERSON  773 

Walsh,  W.    S.   (Shepard),  "Pen  Pictures  of  Modern  Authors."     New 

York,  1886,  Putnam,  86-98. 
Dana,  W.  F. ,  "The  Optimism  of   Emerson."      Boston,  1886,  Cupples, 

Upham  A;  Co.,  1-64. 
Bungay,    G.    W.,    "  Off- Hand   Takings."      New  York,    1854,    Dewitt, 

119-127. 

Nichol,  J.,  "American  Literature."      Edinburgh,  1882,  Black,  254-321. 
Parton,  J.,    "Some  Noted  Princes,"  etc.      New  York,    1885,  Crowell, 

284-288. 
Garnet,  R.  (Robertson),  "  Great  Writers  "  (Emerson).     New  York,  1888, 

Whi  taker. 
Friswell,  J.  H.,  "Modern  Men  of  Letters."     London,  1870,  H odder  & 

Stoughton,  333-342. 
Frothingham,   O.   B.,    "Transcendentalism   in   New   England."      New 

York,  1876,  Putnam,  218-249. 
Hunt,  T.    W.,    "Studies  in  Literature  and  Style."     New   York,  1890, 

Armstrong,  246-279- 
Willis,   N.    P.,    "  Hurrygraphs. ''     Rochester,  New  York,    1853,    Alden 

Beardsly  Co.,  169-179. 
Scudder,  H.  E.,  "  Men  and  Letters. "     Boston,  1889,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  147-171. 
Robertson,  J.  M.,   "Modern  Humanists."     London,   1891,  Swan,  Son- 

iienschein  &  Co.,  112-137. 
North  British  Review,  47:    166-187. 
Christian  Examiner,  30 :   253-262  (C.   C.   Felton) ;   38:  87-106  (F.  H. 

Hedge) ;  48  :   314-318  (C.  A.  Bartol). 
North  American  Review,  136:  431-446  (E.  P.  Whipple)  ;    130:  479-499 

(F.  H.  Underwood) ;   70 :    520-524  (C.  E.  Norton) ;    70  :  520-525 

(C.  E.  Norton);    140:    129-144(660.  Bancroft). 

The  Century  Magazine,  25:    875-886   (Stedman);    27:   925-932   (Bur- 
roughs). 

The  Chautauquan,  17:    687-692  (J.  V.  Cheney). 
Fortnightly  Review,  44:    319-331  (W.  L.  Courtney). 
The  Nation,  34:  375-377  (T.  W.  Higginson) ;  40:  99-101  (T.  W.  Hig- 

ginson). 

The  Arena,  lo:    736-745  (W.  H.  Savage). 
Harper's  Magazine,  52:    4 1 7-420  (E.  P.  Whipple);  68:   457-468  (Annie 

Fields) ;  65  :   278-281  (J.  Hawthorne)  ;  65  :  576-587  (E.  P.  Whip- 
pie). 

Gentleman's  Magazine,  35  :   472-480  (Kernahan). 
Christian  Review,  26  :    640-653  (J.  Caldwell). 
Scribner's  Monthly,  17:    496-512  (F.  B.  Sanbora). 


774  EMERSON 

Literary  World,  II :     175-176    (T.  W.  Higginson)    and  174-185,  obse- 
quies (several  authors). 

Methodist  Quarterly  Re-view,  34:    357~374  (Geo.  Prentice). 
British  Quarterly  Review,  n:    281-315  (J.  Chapman). 
Quarterly  Review,  166  :    130-159. 

Black-wood's  Magazine,  62  :    643-657  ;    155  :   480-490. 
Tail's  Magazine,  15  :    I7~23  (G.  Gilfillan). 
Lit  fell's  Living  Age,  23  :   344-350  (English  Review) 

PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Terseness— Epigram— Aphorism. — "So  many 
precious  sayings  enrich  his  more  sustained  poems  as  to  make 
us  include  him  at  times  with  the  complete  artists.  .  .  . 
Bacon's  elementary  essays  excepted,  there  are  none  in  English 
of  which  it  can  be  more  truly  averred  that  there  is  nothing 
superfluous  in  them.  .  .  .  Each  sentence  is  an  idea, 
an  epigram,  an  image,  or  a  flash  of  spiritual  light.  .  .  . 
Terseness  is  the  distinctive  feature  of  his  style.  .  .  .  No 
one  has  compressed  more  sternly  the  pith  of  his  discourse. 
.  .  .  His  generalizations  pertain  to  the  unseen  world  ; 
viewing  the  actual,  he  puts  its  strength  and  fineness  alike  into 
a  line  or  an  epithet.  He  was  born  with  an  unrivalled  faculty 
of  selection.  .  .  .  Emerson  treats  of  the  principles  be- 
hind all  history,  and  his  laconic  phrases  are  the  very  honey- 
cells  of  thought." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  His  short  sentences  scintillate  and  snap  like  sparks  from 
an  electrical  conductor,  and  each  gives  a  separate  tingle  to  the 
nerves." — Edward  Dowden. 

"  In  choice  and  pith  of  diction  he  hits  the  mark  with  a 
felicity  that  is  almost  his  own  in  this  generation.  He  is  terse, 
concentrated,  and  free  from  the  blunder  of  mistaking  intel- 
lectual dawdling  for  meditation." — -John  Morley. 

"  It  would  be  impossible  to  condense  any  of  his  essays  ; 
they  are  the  last  results  of  condensation  ;  we  can  only  cut 
them  up  and  abridge  them." — -John  Burroughs. 

"  You  are  dazzled  on  every  page  by.  his  superabundance  of 


EMERSON  775 

compactly  expressed  reflection  and  his  marvellous  command  of 
all  the  resources  of  imaginative  illustration.  Every  paragraph 
is  literally  '  rammed  with  life.'  A  fortnight's  meditation  is 
sometimes  condensed  into  a  sentence  of  a  couple  of  lines. 
Almost  every  word  bears  the  mark  of  deliberate  thought  in 
its  selection.  .  .  .  That  wonderful  compactness  and  con- 
densation of  statement  which  surprise  and  charm  the  reader  of 
his  books  were  due  to  the  fact  that  he  exerted  every  faculty  of 
his  mind  in  the  act  of  verbal  expression.  A  prodigal  in  re- 
spect to  thoughts,  he  was  still  the  most  austere  economist  in 
the  use  of  words.  .  .  .  The  fire  in  him,  which  would  in- 
stantly have  dissipated  ice  into  vapor,  made  the  iron  in  him 
run  molten  and  white-hot  into  the  mould  of  his  thought  when 
he  was  stirred  by  a  great  sentiment  or  an  inspiring  insight.  It 
is  admitted  that  he  is  worthy  to  rank  among  the  great  masters 
of  expression  ;  yet  he  was  the  least  fluent  of  educated  beings. 
In  a  company  of  swift  talkers  he  seemed  utterly  helpless,  until 
he  fixed  upon  the  right  word  or  phrase  to  embody  his  mean- 
ing, and  then  the  word  or  phrase  was  like  a  gold  coin,  fresh 
and  bright  from  the  mint  and  recognized  as  worth  ten  times 
as  much  as  the  small  change  of  conversation  which  had  been 
circulating  so  rapidly  around  the  table  while  he  was  mute  or 
stammering." — E.  P.  Wkipple. 

"What  he  says  of  both  [Shakespeare  and  Goethe]  is  de- 
duced from  the  very  essence  of  their  characters,  and  is  at 
once  so  terse  and  so  profound  that  in  many  places  almost 
every  word  seems  to  need  a  commentary." — Grimm. 

"  To  know  how  universally  the  thought  and  the  portable 
epigram  of  Emerson  have  been  diffused,  it  is  only  necessary 
for  the  reader,  familiar  with  recent  literature,  to  open  some 
of  the  early  essays,  such  as  '  Nature  '  or  '  English  Traits  '  and 
to  renew  the  acquaintance  begun  twenty-five  years  ago.  On 
every  page  there  will  be  seen  scintillating  lines  that  have 
since  become  the  common  property  of  mankind,  quoted  by 
everybody,  like  '  Hamlet '  or  '  Lycidas,'  and  generally  with- 


776  EMERSON 

out  a  thought  of  the  source  whence  they  came." — F.  H. 
Underwood. 

"For choice  and  pith  of  language  he  belongs  to  a  better 
age  than  ours.  .  .  .  His  eye  for  a  fine  telling  phrase 
that  will  carry  true  is  like  that  of  a  backwoodsman  for  a  rifle ; 
and  he  will  dredge  up  a  choice  word  from  the  mud  of  Cotton 
Mather  himself.  A  diction  at  once  so  rich  and  homely  as 
his  I  know  not  where  to  match  in  these  days  of  writing  by  the 
page;  it  is  like  homespun  cloth  of  gold." — Lowell. 

' '  It  may  be  fearlessly  said  that,  within  the  limits  of  the 
English  sentence,  no  man  who  ever  wrote  the  English  tongue 
has  put  more  meaning  into  words  than  Emerson.  .  .  . 
Neither  Greek  precision  nor  Roman  vigor  could  produce  a 
phrase  that  Emerson  could  not  match.  .  .  .  Look 
through  all  Emerson's  writings,  and  then  consider  whether  in 
all  literature  you  can  find  a  man  who  has  better  fulfilled  that 
aspiration  stated  in  such  condensed  words  by  Joubert,  '  to 
put  a  whole  book  into  a  page,  a  whole  page  into  a  phrase, 
and  that  phrase  into  a  word.'  After  all,  it  is  phrases  and 
words  won  like  this  which  give  immortality." —  T.  W.  Hig- 
ginson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  is  always  a  best  way  to  do  everything,  if  it  be  to  boil 
an  egg.  .  .  .  The  nobility  cannot,  in  any  country,  be  dis- 
guised. .  .  .  Your  manners  are  always  under  examination, 
and  by  committees  little  suspected.  .  .  .  Men  are  like 
Geneva  watches  with  crystal  faces  which  expose  the  whole 
movement.  .  .  .  Fine  manners  need  the  support  of  fine 
manners  in  others.  .  .  .  The  basis  of  good  manners  is  self- 
reliance.  .  :  .  The  things  of  a  man  for  which  we  visit  him 
were  done  in  the  dark  and  the  cold.  A  little  integrity  is  better 
than  any  career." — Essay  on  Behavior. 

"  Fashion,  though  in  a  strange  way,  represents  all  manly  virtue. 
It  is  a  virtue  gone  to  seed  :  it  is  a  kind  of  posthumous  honor. 
It  does  not  often  caress  the  great  but  the  children  of  the  great : 


EMERSON  777 

it  is  a  hall  of  the  past.  It  usually  sets  its  face  against  the  great 
of  this  hour.  Great  men  are  not  commonly  in  its  halls  :  they  are 
absent  in  the  field  ;  they  are  working,  not  triumphing." — Essay 
on  Manners. 

11  Prudence  is  the  virtue  of  the  senses.  It  is  the  science  of 
appearances.  It  is  the  outmost  action  of  the  inward  life.  It  is 
God  taking  thought  for  oxen.  It  moves  matter  after  the  laws  of 
matter.  It  is  content  to  seek  health  of  body  by  complying  with 
physical  conditions  and  health  of  mind  by  the  laws  of  the  intel- 
lect."— Essay  on  Prudence. 


2.  Lack  of  Logical  Sequence.— "  The  weak  place 
in  him  as  a  literary  artist  is  probably  his  want  of  continuity 
and  the  tie  of  association — a  want  which,  as  he  grew  old, 
became  a  disease,  and  led  to  a  break  in  his  mind  like  that  of 
a  bridge  with  one  of  its  piers  gone,  and  his  power  of  com- 
munication was  nearly  or  quite  lost.  There  is  no  artistic  con- 
ception that  runs  the  length  and  breadth  of  any  of  his  works  ; 
no  unity  of  scheme  or  plan,  like  that  of  an  architect  or  of  a 
composer,  that  makes  an  inevitable  whole  of  any  of  his  books 
or  essays  ;  seldom  a  central  and  leading  idea,  of  which  the 
rest  are  but  radiations  and  unfoldings.  His  essays  are  frag- 
mentary successions  of  brilliant  and  startling  affirmations  or 
vaticinations  with  little  or  no  logical  sequence." — -John 
JBurroughs. 

"  He  sacrifices  unity  to  richness  of  detail.  .  .  .  The 
ideas  his  sentences  involve  are  on  the  scale  of  a  continent;  in 
form  they  are  adapted  for  a  cabinet  of  curiosities.  They  are 
sweeping  generalizations  given  in  essences.  Short  and  pene- 
trating, though  irregularly  arranged,  they  are  like  gold  nails 
struck  into  a  temple  wall  apparently  at  random  ;  the  pattern  is 
an  enigma  to  the  uninitiated.  .  .  .  His  style,  all  armed 
with  points  and  antitheses,  like  the  bristles  of  a  hedgehog, 
lacks  repose.  .  .  .  His  essays  are  bundles  of  loose  ideas 
tacked  together  only  by  a  common  title  ;  handfuls  of  scraps 


7/8  EMERSON 

laid  by  singly,  taken  out  in  a  mass,  and  tossed  down  before 
his  audience  like  the  miscellaneous  contents  of  a  conjurer's 
hat."—/.  Nichol. 

"  There  is  a  certain  impression  left  on  the  minds  of  Emer- 
son's readers  which  may  be  described  as  fragmentary.  .  .  . 
Philosophers  and  prophets  do  not  feel  bound  to  produce  epics 
in  twelve  books  or  dramas  in  five  acts,  or  even  blank-verse 
poems  fifty  pages  long.  When  Emerson  had  said  his  say  in 
verse  he  stopped.  .  .  .  Emerson  as  a  writer  has  been 
compared  to  that  minister  who  gradually  filled  a  barrel  with 
separately  written  pages  and  picked  out  enough  for  a  sermon 
when  Sunday  came.  Again,  it  has  been  said  that  Emerson's 
essays  would  read  as  well  backward  as  forward,  sentence  by 
sentence.  ...  In  poetry,  as  in  prose,  Emerson  prepared 
his  bits  of  material  when  he  would  and  afterward  elaborated 
them  into  symmetrical  wholes  at  leisure  or  fit  occasion." — 
C.  F.  Richardson. 

"Emerson  cannot,  I  think,  with  justice  be  called  a  great 
philosophical  writer.  He  cannot  build ;  his  arrangement  of 
philosophical  ideas  has  no  progress  in  it,  no  evolution  ;  he 
does  not  construct  a  philosophy.  .  .  .  Emerson  himself 
formulates  perfectly  the  defect  of  his  own  philosophical  pro- 
ductions when  he  speaks  of  his  '  formidable  tendency  to  the 
lapidary  style.'  '  I  build  my  house  of  bowlders,'  he  says 
again,  '  with  very  little  system,  and,  as  regards  composition, 
with  most  fragmentary  result ;  paragraphs  incompressible, 
each  sentence  an  infinitely  repellant  particle.'  Nothing  can 
be  truer. ' ' — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  It  [a  certain  lecture]  was  as  if,  after  vainly  trying  to  get 
his  paragraphs  into  sequence  and  order,  he  had  tried  at  last 
the  desperate  expedient  of  shuffling  them.  It  was  chaos  come 
again,  but  it  was  a  chaos  full  of  shooting  stars,  a  jumble  of 
creating  forces." — Lowell. 

"  We  are  told  of  his  mode  of  preparing  an  essay — of  the 
slow-going  medley  of  thoughts  on  a  topic  at  last  brought  out 


EMERSON  7/9 

and  strung  at  random,  like  a  child's  variegated  beads." — E. 
C.  Stcdman. 

"  Everything  is  thrown  in  just  as  it  comes,  and  sometimes 
the  pell-mell  is  enough  to  persuade  us  that  Pope  did  not  exag- 
gerate when  he  said  that  no  one  qualification  is  so  likely  to 
make  a  good  writer  as  the  power  of  rejecting  his  own  thoughts. 
.  .  .  '  Can  you  tell  me,'  asked  one  of  his  neighbors, 
while  Emerson  was  lecturing,  '  what  connection  there  is  be- 
tween that  last  sentence  and  the  one  that  went  before,  and  what 
connection  it  all  has  with  Plato  ?  '  '  None,  my  friend,  save 
in  God,'  was  the  reply.  .  .  .  As  he  says  of  Landor,  his 
sentences  are  cubes  which  will  stand  firm,  place  them  how  or 
where  you  will.  .  .  .  One  of  the  traces  that  every  critic 
notes  in  Emerson's  writing  is  that  it  is  so  abrupt,  so  sudden 
in  its  transitions,  so  discontinuous,  so  inconsecutive." — John 
Morley. 

There  are,  in  many  of  his  essays,  separate  statements  pre- 
senting no  logical  continuity.  .  .  .  He  might,  for  har- 
mony's sake,  have  arranged  the  blossoms  he  had  plucked  ac- 
cording to  their  hue  and  fragrance  ;  but  it  was  not  his  affair 
to  go  further  in  their  classification.  .  .  .  His  writings 
have  coherence  by  virtue  of  their  single-hearted  motive." — 
Julian  Hawthorne. 

"There  is  not  a  trace  of  system,  of  progressive  advance- 
ment in  thought,  of  consistent  intuition,  in  all  his  writings. 
.  .  .  Contradictory  intuitions,  as  he  would  call  them, 
abound  in  almost  every  page.  .  .  .  As  a  writer  his  man- 
nerism lies  in  the  exceeding  unexpectedness  of  his  transitions  ; 
in  his  strange,  swift,  and  sudden  yokings  of  the  most  distant 
and  unrelated  ideas." — George  Gilfillan. 

11  His  compositions  affect  us,  not  as  logic  linked  in  syllo- 
gisms, but  as  voluntaries  rather,  or  preludes,  in  which  one  is 
not  tied  to  any  design  of  air,  but  may  vary  his  key  or  note  at 
pleasure,  as  if  improvised  without  any  particular  scope  of  ar- 
gument ;  each  period,  each  paragraph  being  a  perfect  note  in 


780  EMERSON 

itself,  however  it  may  chance  to  chime  with  its  accompani 
ments  in  the  piece." — Bronson  Alcott. 

"  He  was  only  a  philosopher  in  that  ancient  sense  of  which 
his  friend  Alcott  still  offers  a  faint  adumbration  ;  his  mission 
was  to  sit,  like  Socrates  beneath  the  plane  tree,  and  offer  pro- 
found and  beautiful  aphorisms,  without  the  vague  thread  of  the 
Socratic  method  to  tie  them  together." — T.  U\  Higginson. 

"  Indifferent  to  logic,  he  suppressed  all  the  processes  of  his 
thinking,  and  announced  its  results  in  affirmations. 
The  collection  of  these  separate  insights  into  nature  and  hu- 
man life  he  ironically  calls  an  essay ;  and  much  criticism  has 
been  wasted  in  showing  that  the  aphoristic  and  axiomatic  sen- 
tences are  often  connected  by  mere  juxtaposition  on  the  page 
and  not  by  logical  relation  with  each  other,  and  that  at  the 
end  we  have  no  perception  of  a  series  of  thoughts  leading  up 
to  a  clear  idea  of  the  general  theme.  .  .  .  Emerson's  so- 
called  essays  sparkle  with  sentences  which  might  be  made  the 
texts  for  numerous  ordinary  essays ;  and  his  general  title,  it 
may  be  added,  is  apt  to  be  misleading.  He  is  fragmentary 
in  composition  because  he  is  a  fanatic  for  compactness ;  and 
every  paragraph,  sometimes  every  sentence,  is  a  record  of  an 
insight.  Hence  comes  the  impression  that  his  sentences  are 
huddled  together  rather  than  artistically  disposed." — E.  P, 
Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"A  man  is  a  whole  encyclopedia  of  facts.  The  creation  of  a 
thousand  forests  is  in  one  acorn,  and  Egypt,  Greece,  Rome, 
Gaul,  Britain,  America,  lie  folded  already  in  the  first  man.  Epoch 
after  epoch,  camp,  kingdom,  empire,  republic,  democracy,  are 
merely  the  application  of  his  manifold  spirit  to  the  manifold 
world.  This  human  mind  wrote  history  and  this  must  read  it. 
The  Sphinx  must  solve  her  own  riddle.  If  the  whole  of  history  is 
in  one  man,  it  is  all  to  be  explained  from  individual  experience. 
There  is  a  relation  between  the  hours  of  our  life  and  the  centuries 
of  time." — Essay  on  History. 


EMERSON  781 

"  The  only  money  of  God  is  God.  He  pays  never  with  any- 
thing less  or  anything  else.  The  only  reward  of  virtue  is  virtue  : 
the  only  way  to  have  a  friend  is  to  be  one.  Vain  to  hope  to  come 
nearer  a  man  by  getting  into  his  house.  If  unlike,  his  soul  only 
flees  the  faster  from  you,  and  you  shall  catch  never  a  true  glance 
of  his  eye.  We  see  the  noble  afar  off,  and  they  repel  us;  why 
should  we  intrude  ?  " — Essay  on  Friendship. 

"  Character  is  higher  than  intellect.  Thinking  is  the  function. 
Living  is  the  functionary.  The  stream  retreats  to  its  source.  A 
great  soul  will  be  strong  to  live  as  well  as  strong  to  think.  Does 
he  lack  organ  or  medium  to  impart  his  truths  ?  He  can  still  fall 
back  on  this  elemental  force  of  living  them.  This  is  a  total  act. 
Thinking  is  a  partial  act.  Let  the  grandeur  of  justice  shine  in 
his  affairs.  Let  the  beauty  of  affection  cheer  his  lowly  roof. 
Those  '  far  from  fame,'  who  dwell  and  act  with  him,  will  feel  the 
force  of  his  constitution  in  the  doings  and  passages  of  the  day 
better  than  it  can  be  measured  by  any  public  and  designed  dis- 
play. Time  shall  teach  him  that  the  scholar  loses  no  hour  which 
the  man  lives.  Herein  he  unfolds  the  sacred  germ  of  his  instinct, 
screened  from  influence.  What  is  lost  in  seemliness  is  gained  in 
strength." — Man  Thinking. 


3.  Mysticism  —  Introspection  —  Subjectiveness. — 

"  It  must  be  taken  for  granted  that  Wordsworth's  experience 
was  the  result  and  record  of  genuine  insight  and  that  it  can- 
not be  curtly  dismissed  as  '  crazy,  mystical  metaphysics'  be- 
fore Emerson  can  even  obtain  a  hearing;  for  he  undoubtedly 
was  more  crazy  and  mystical  than  Wordsworth  cared  to  be, 
while  independently  following  in  the  path  which  Wordsworth 
had  marked  out.  .  .  .  He  was  a  man  who  had  earned  the 
right  to  utter  these  noble  truths  by  patient  meditation  and 
clear  insight.  .  .  .  It  is  this  depth  of  spiritual  experience 
and  subtility  of  spiritual  insight  which  distinguishes  Emerson 
from  all  other  American  authors  and  makes  him  an  elementary 
power  as  well  as  an  elementary  thinker." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  There  is  much  in  Emerson's  works  that  will  not  stand 
rigid  literary  tests ;  much  that  is   too  fanciful  and  ethereal, 


782  EMERSON 

too  curious  and  paradoxical — not  real  or  true,  but  only  seem- 
ingly so,  or  so  by  a  kind  of  violence  or  disruption." — -John 
Burroughs.  .  • 

"  He  feels  that  every  enigma  runs  into  the  great  enigma — 
what  is  man  ?  and  that,  if  he  could  but  unlock  his  own  heart, 
the  key  of  the  universe  were  found.  ...  He  persists  in 
believing  that  the  creation  is  a  vast  symbol  of  man  ;  that 
every  tree  and  blade  of  grass  is  somehow  cognate  with  his 
nature  and  significant  of  his  destiny ;  and  that  the  remotest 
stars  are  only  the  distant  perspective  of  that  picture  of  which 
he  is  the  central  figure.  .  .  .  You  feel  somewhat  like  the 
unlearned  reader  of  Howe  and  Baxter  when  he  comes  upon 
their  Latin  and  Greek  quotations :  you  skip  or  bolt  his  bits 
of  mysticism,  and  pass  on  with  greater  gusto  to  the  clear  and 
the  open.  .  .  .  His  utterances  are  becoming  vaguer  and 
more  elaborately  oracular.  He  is  dealing  with  deliberate 
puzzles — through  the  breaks  in  the  dark  forest  of  his  page  you 
see  his  mind  in  full  retreat  toward  some  remoter  Cimmerian 
gloom.  .  .  .  He  has  been  living  in  a  world  of  his  own. 
He  has  been  more  conversant  with  principles  than  with  facts 
— and  more  with  dreams  than  with  either.  .  .  .  It  is  the 
bird  that  speaks — our  soul  alone  can  furnish  the  interpretation. 
So  with  many  of  Emerson's  poems.  They  mean  absolutely 
nothing — they  are  nonsense  verse,  except  to  those  who  have 
learned  their  cipher  and  whose  heart  instinctively  dances  to 
their  tune.  It  is  often  a  wordless  music — a  wild,  wailing 
rhythm — as  a  sound  inexplicable  but  not  absurd  or  meaning- 
less. .  .  .  Emerson's  verses  float  us  away  listening  and 
lost  on  their  stream  of  sound  and  of  dim  suggestive  meaning. 
Led  himself,  as  he  repeatedly  says,  '  as  far  as  the  incommuni- 
cable,' he  leads  us  into  the  same  mystic  regions." — George 
Gilfillan. 

"  Few  have  had  Emerson's  inward  eye,  but  it  is  well  that 
some  have  not  been  restricted .  to  it.  ...  His  voice 
comes  '  like  a  falling  star  '  from  a"  skyey  dome  of  pure  ab- 


EMERSON  783 

straction.  .  .  .  If  a  theist,  with  his  intuition  of  an  all- 
pervading  life,  he  no  doubt  felt  himself  a  portion  of  that  life, 
and  the  sense  of  omnipresence  was  so  clearly  the  dominant 
sense  of  its  attributes  that  to  call  him  a  theist  rather  than  a 
pantheist  is  simply  a  dispute  about  terms.  .  .  .  One  may 
say  that  his  philosophical  method  bears  to  the  inductive  or 
empirical  a  relation  similar  to  that  between  the  poetry  of 
self-expression  and  the  poetry  of  aesthetic  creation,  a  relation 
of  the  subjective  to  the  objective.  .  .  .  If  he  sought 
first  principles,  he  looked  within  himself  for  them." — E.  C. 
Stedman. 

"  His  mysticism  gives  us  a  counterpoise  to  our  super-prac- 
ticality. ' ' — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  wise  man  not  only  leaves  out  of  his  thought  the  many, 
but  leaves  out  the  few.  Fountains,  fountains  ;  the  self-moved, 
the  absorbed,  the  commander  because  he  is  commanded,  the 
assured,  the  primary — they  are  good,  for  these  announce  the 
present  pressure  of  supreme  power.  Our  action  should  rest 
mathematically  on  our  own  substance.  In  nature  there  are  no 
false  valuations.  A  pound  of  water  in  the  ocean  tempest  has  no 
more  gravity  than  in  a  mid-summer  pond.  All  things  work 
exactly  according  to  their  quality  and  according  to  their 
quantity;  attempt  what  they  can  do,  except  man  only." — Es- 
say on  Character. 

"  And  the  first  condition  is,  that  we  must  leave  a  too  close  and 
lingering  adherence  to  the  actual,  to  facts,  and  study  the  senti- 
ment as  it  appeared  in  hope  and  not  in  history  ;  for  each  man 
sees  his  own  life  defaced  and  disfigured,  as  the  life  of  man  is  not, 
to  his  imagination.  Each  man  sees  over  his  own  experience  a 
certain  slime  of  error,  while  that  of  other  men  looks  fair  and 
ideal.  Let  any  man  go  back  to  those  delicious  relations  which 
make  the  beauty  of  his  life,  which  have  given  him  sincerest 
instruction  and  nourishment,  he  will  shrink  and  shrink.  Alas  ! 
I  know  not  why,  but  infinite  compunctions  embitter  in  mature 
life  all  the  remembrances  of  budding  sentiment  and  cover  every 
beloved  name.  Everything  is  beautiful,  seen  from  the  point  of 


784  EMERSON 

the  intellect  or  as  truth.     But  all  is  sour  if  seen  as  experience." 
— Essay  on  Love. 

"  A  man  who  stands  united  with  his  thought  conceives  mag- 
nificently of  himself.  He  is  conscious  of  a  universal  success, 
even  though  bought  by  uniform  particular  failures.  No  advan- 
tages, no  powers,  no  gold  or  force  can  be  any  match  for  him.  I 
cannot  choose  but  rely  on  my  own  poverty  rather  than  on  your 
wealth.  I  cannot  make  your  consciousness  tantamount  to  mine. 
Only  the  star  dazzles  ;  the  planet  has  a  faint,  moon-like  ray.  I 
hear  what  you  say  of  the  admirable  parts  and  tried  temper  of  the 
party  you  praise,  but  I  see  welJ  that,  for  all  his  purple  cloaks,  I 
shall  not  like  him,  unless  he  is  at  least  a  poor  Greek  like  me.  I 
cannot  deny  it,  O  friend,  that  the  vast  shadow  of  the  Phenomenal 
includes  thee  also  in  its  pied  and  painted  immensity." — Es- 
say on  Friendship. 

4.  Originality  —  Independence  —  Individuality.— 
"  It  was  impossible  for  Emerson  to  part  with  his  own  individ- 
uality, even  in  celebrating  the  achievements  of  the  inspired 
saints,  bards,  and  artists  who  had  seemingly  parted  with  theirs. 
He  did  not  desire  to  '  disindividualize '  himself  while  in- 
tensely appreciating  other  individualities.  .  .  .  He  rep- 
resents Thought  in  any  adjustment  of  our  poetic  group,  and 
furthermore — his  thought  being  independent  and  emancipa- 
tory— the  American  conflict  with  superstition,  with  servility 
to  inherited  usage  and  opinion.  .  .  .  We  know  his  dis- 
taste for  convention,  his  mistrust  of'  tinkle  '  and  '  efficacious 
rhymes.'  But  his  gift  lifted  him  above  his  will;  and  while 
throwing  out  his  grapnel,  clinging  to  prose  as  the  firm  ground 
of  his  work,  he  rose  involuntary  and  with  music. 
The  force  of  Emerson  lay  in  the  depth  and  clearness  of  his 
intentions.  He  gave  us  the  revelation  and  prophecy  of  a  man 
among  millions.  .  .  .  He  has  taught  his  countrymen  the 
worth  of  virtue,  wisdom,  courage — above  all,  to  fashion  life 
upon  a  self-reliant  pattern,  obeying  the  dictates  of  their  own 
souls.  .  .  .  Emerson  never  felt  the  strength  of  propor- 
tion that  compels  the  races  to  whom  art  is  a  religion  and  a 


EMERSON  785 

law.  .  .  .  His  instinct  of  personality,  not  without  a 
pride  of  its  own,  made  him  a  nonconformist." — E.  C.  Sted- 
man. 

"  Emerson  had  a  pronounced,  almost  a  haughty  individu- 
ality. Throughout  his  life  he  guarded  it  with  a  jealous  care. 
He  could  never  endure  the  thought  of  being  the  organ  of  any. 
.  .  .  In  reading  him  we  feel  that  we  are  in  communion 
with  an  original  person  as  well  as  with  an  original  poet.  .  .  . 
Nothing  that  can  be  said  against  him  touches  his  essential 
quality  of  manliness.  .  .  .  How  superb  and  animating  is 
his  lofty  intellectual  courage  !  '  The  soul,'  he  says,  '  is  in  her 
native  realm,  and  it  is  wider  than  space,  older  than  time,  wide 
as  hope,  rich  as  love.'  .  .  .  The  poet's  character  was  on 
a  level  with  his  lofty  thinking." — E.  P.  IVfiipple. 

"  Both  in  poetry  and  in  prose  his  influence  is  as  spontane- 
ous as  that  in  nature;  he  announces  and  lets  others  plead." 
— C.  F.  Richardson. 

"Instead  of  cultivating  the  tormenting  and  enfeebling 
spirit  of  scruple,  instead  of  multiplying  precepts,  he  bade  men 
not  to  crush  out  their  souls  under  the  burden  of  duty ;  they 
are  to  remember  that  a  wise  life  is  not  wholly  filled  up  by 
commandments  to  do  and  to  abstain  from  doing.  Hence  we 
have  in  Emerson  the  teaching  of  a  vigorous  morality  without 
the  formality  and  the  deadly  tedium  of  didacticism." — -John 
Morley. 

"  No  one  has  had  so  steady  and  constant  and  above  all  so 
natural  a  vision  of  what  we  require  and  what  we  are  capable  of 
in  the  way  of  aspiration  and  independence." — Henry  James. 

"  The  intellectual  life  of  Emerson  for  nearly  half  a  century 
has  affected  educated  men  with  an  influence  that  is  immeasur- 
able; he  is  '  the  Columbus  of  modern  thought.'  Since  Lord 
Bacon  there  has  not  been  another  writer  whose  resources  were 
so  wholly  in  himself.  He  belongs  with  the  three  or  four 
philosophic  minds  of  the  first  order  born  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race." — F  H.  Underwood. 
50 


786  EMERSON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  characteristic  of  a  genuine  heroism  is  its  persistency. 
All  men  have  wandering  impulses,  fits  and  starts  of  generosity. 
But  when  you  have  resolved  to  be  great,  abide  by  yourself,  and 
do  not  weakly  try  to  reconcile  yourself  with  the  world.  The 
heroic  cannot  be  common  nor  the  common  the  heroic.  Yet  we 
have  the  weakness  to  expect  the  sympathy  of  people  in  those 
actions  whose  excellence  is  that  they  outrun  sympathy  and  ap- 
peal to  a  tardy  justice.  If  you  would -serve  your  brother  because 
it  is  fit  for  you  to  serve  him,  do  not  take  back  your  words  when 
you  find  that  prudent  people  do  not  commend  you.  Be  true  to 
your  own  act,  and  congratulate  yourself  if  you  have  done  some- 
thing strange  and  extravagant  and  broken  the  monotony  of  a 
decorous  age." — Essay  on  Heroism. 

"  Whoso  would  be  a  man  must  be  a  nonconformist.  He  who 
would  gather  immortal  palms  must  not  be  hindered  by  the  name 
of  goodness.  Nothing  is  at  last  sacred  but  the  integrity  of  our 
own  minds.  Absolve  you  to  yourself  and  you  shall  have  the 
suffrage  of  the  world.  I  remember  an  answer,  which,  when  quite 
young,  I  was  prompted  to  make  to  a  valued  adviser,  who  was  wont 
to  importune  me  with  the  dear  old  doctrines  of  the  church.  On 
my  saying,  '  What  have  I  to  do  with  the  sacredness  of  traditions, 
if  I  live  wholly  from  within  ?  '  my  friend  suggested — '  But  these 
impulses  may  be  from  below,  not  from  above.'  I  replied,  '  They 
do  not  seem  to  me  to  be  such ;  but  if  I  am  the  devil's  child,  I 
will  live  then  from  the  devil.'  " — Essay  on  Self -Reliance. 

5.  Sense  of  Beauty— Poetic  Imagery.— "The  sense 
of  beauty  is  his  supreme  faculty.     In  this  respect  only  one 
modern  author,   Ruskin,  bears  a  comparison  with  him."- 
F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  The  perception  of  beauty  in  nature  or  in  human  nature, 
whether  it  be  the  beauty  of  a  flower  or  of  a  soul,  makes  Emer- 
son joyous  and  glad  ;  he  exults  in  celebrating  it,  and  he  com- 
municates to  his  readers  his  own  ecstatic  mood.  .  .  .  The 
singular  attractiveness  of  his  writings  comes  from  his  intense 
perception  of  beauty,  both  in  its  abstract  quality  as  the  '  aw- 


EMERSON  787 

ful  loveliness '  which  such  poets  as  Shelley  have  celebrated 
and  in  the  more  concrete  expression  by  which  it  fascinates 
ordinary  minds.  .  .  .  His  '  Ode  to  Beauty '  indicates 
that  the  sense  of  beauty  penetrated  to  the  inmost  centre  of  his 
being,  and  was  an  indissoluble  element  in  his  character. 
.  .  .  The  sense  of  beauty,  indeed,  was  so  vital  an  ele- 
ment in  the  constitution  of  his  being  that  it  decorated  every- 
thing it  touched.  .  .  .  His  imaginative  faculty,  both  in 
the  conception  and  creation  of  beauty,  is  uncorrupted  by  any 
morbid  sentiment.  His  vision  reaches  to  the  very  source  of 
beauty — the  beauty  that  cheers." — E.  P.  If hippie. 

"  Words  which  are  pictures — sounds  which  are  songs — jubi- 
lant raptures  in  praise  of  nature,  reminding  you  afar  off  of 
those  old  Hebrew  hymns,  which,  paired  to  the  timbrel  or  the 
clash  of  cymbals,  rose  like  the  cries  of  some  great  victory  to 
Heaven — are  given  to  Emerson  at  his  pleasure.  .  .  .  Ex- 
quisite as  many  of  his  poems  are,  his  other  writings  are  a  truer 
and  richer  voice,  their  short  and  mellow  sentences  moving  to 
the  breath  of  his  spirit  as  musically  as  the  pine  cones  to  the 
breeze.  .  .  .  He  is  the  greatest  of  American  poets.  We 
refer  not  to  his  verse,  which  is,  in  general,  woven  mist,  involv- 
ing little — but  to  the  beautiful  and  abrupt  utterances  about 
nature  in  his  prose.  No  finer  things  about  the  outward 
features  and  the  transient  meanings  of  creation  have  been  said 
since  the  Hebrews  than  are  to  be  found  in  some  of  his  books." 
— George  Gilfillan. 

"  The  poetic  element  at  times  takes  the  form  of  the  graphic  ' 
or  picturesque,  the  pictorial  or  imaginative  expression  of  ideas. 
.  .  .  It  gave  to  his  prose  that  poetic  flavor  that  so  much 
of  it  possesses.  .  .  .  Hence  the  frequent  recurrence,  es- 
pecially in  his  literary  essays,  of  passages  of  marked  poetic 
beauty.  .  .  .  There  is  the  presence  of  taste,  beauty,  im- 
agination, poetic  appreciation,  and  culture  in  theme,  discus- 
sion, and  motive." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

"  Emerson's  prose  is  full  of  poetry,  and  his  poems  are  light 


788  EMERSON 

and  air.     His  modes  of  expression,  like  his  epithets,  are  imag- 
inative."— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"There  is  more  poetry  in  his  prose  than  in  his  poems." 
— Matthew  Arnold. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

' '  There  are  days  which  occur  in  this  climate,  at  almost  any 
season  of  the  year,  wherein  the  world  .reaches  its  perfection ;  when 
the  air,  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  the  earth  make  a  harmony,  as 
if  nature  would  indulge  her  offspring  ;  when,  in  these  bleak  up- 
per sides  of  the  planet,  nothing  is  to  desire  that  we  have  heard 
of  the  happiest  latitudes,  and  we  bask  in  the  shining  hours  of 
Florida  and  Cuba  ;  when  everything  that  has  life  gives  sign  of 
satisfaction,  and  the  cattle  that  lie  on  the  ground  seem  to  have 
great  and  tranquil  thoughts.  These  halcyons  may  be  looked  for 
with  a  little  more  assurance  in  that  pure  October  weather  which 
we  distinguish  by  the  name  of  Indian  Summer.  The  day,  im- 
measurably long,  sleeps  over  the  broad  hills  and  warm  wide 
fields.  To  have  lived  through  all  its  sunny  hours  seems  longevity 
enough." — Essay  on  Nature. 

"For  it  is  a  fire  that,  kindling  its  first  embers  in  the  narrow 
nook  of  a  private  bosom,  caught  from  a  wandering  spark  out  of 
another  private  heart,  grows  and  enlarges  until  it  warms  and 
beams  upon  multitudes  of  men  and  women,  upon  the  universal 
heart  of  all,  and  so  lights  up  the  whole  world  and  all  nature  with 
its  generous  flames." — Essay  on  Love. 

' '  I  have  seen  the  softness  and  beauty  of  the  summer  clouds 
floating  feathery  overhead,  enjoying,  as  it  seemed,  their  height 
and  privilege  of  motion,  while  yet  they  appeared  not  so  much 
the  drapery  of  this  place  and  hour  as  forelooking  to  some  pa- 
vilions and  gardens  of  festivity  beyond.  It  is  an  odd  jealousy  : 
but  the  poet  finds  himself  not  near  enough  to  his  object.  The 
pine  tree,  the  river,  the  bank  of  flowers  before  him  does  not  seem 
to  be  nature.  Nature  is  still  elsewhere.  This  other  is  but  out- 
skirt  and  far-off  reflection,  an  echo  of  the  triumph  that  has  passed 
by,  and  is  now  at  its  glancing  splendor  and  heyday,  perchance 
in  the  neighboring  fields,  or  if  you  stand  in  the  fields,  then  in  the 
adjacent  woods." — Essay  on  Nature. 


EMERSON  789 

6.  Suggestiveness. — Emerson  himself  well  defines  this 
characteristic  of  his  own  style,  when  he  says  :  "  The  most  in- 
teresting writing  is  that  which  does  not  quite  satisfy  the  reader. 
Try  and  leave  a  little  thinking  for  him  ;  that  will  be  better  for 
you  both.  The  trouble  with  most  writers  is  they  spread  too 
thin.  The  reader  is  as  quick  as  they ;  has  got  there  before 
them,  and  is  ready  and  waiting.  A  little  guessing  does  him 
no  harm,  so  I  would  assist  him  with  no  connection.  If  you 
can  see  how  the  harness  fits,  he  can.  But  make  sure  that  you 
see  it." 

"Emerson's  so-called  essay  sparkles  with  sentences  which 
might  be  made  the  texts  for  numerous  ordinary  essays.  .  .  . 
He  has  the  immense  advantage  of  suggesting  something  new 
to  the  diligent  reader  after  he  has  read  him  for  the  fiftieth 
time.  .  .  .  His  sentences  have  furnished  texts  for  ser- 
mons ;  his  paragraphs  have  been  expanded  into  volumes,  and 
open  minds,  representing  every  variety  of  creed,  have  gladly 
appropriated  and  worked  out,  after  their  own  fashion,  hints 
and  impulses  derived  from  the  creedless  seer  and  thinker." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  We  look  upon  him  as  one  of  the  few  men  of  genius  whom 
our  age  has  produced,  and  there  needs  no  better  proof  of  it 
than  his  masculine  faculty  of  fecundating  other  minds." — 
Lowell. 

"  From  that  time  I  have  never  ceased  to  read  Emerson's 
works  ;  and  whenever  I  take  up  a  volume  it  seems  to  me  as 
if  I  were  reading  it  for  the  first  time.  ...  He  sometimes 
made  wonderfully  simple  observations  which  yet  disentangled 
the  most  intricate  trains  of  thought." — Grimm. 

"  Probably  the  best  test  of  good  prose  is  this :  it  is  always 
creative  ;  it  begets  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  a  deep  and  per- 
vading sense  of  life  and  reality.  Now  that  Emerson  is 
gone,  how  many  are  there  in  America?  .  .  .  He  was 
to  scatter  the  seed-germs  of  nobler  thinking  and  living,  not 
to  rear  a  temple  to  the  muses.  — -John  Burroughs. 


79O  EMERSON 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  weakness  of  the  will  begins  when  the  individual  would 
be  something  of  himself.  All  reform  aims  in  some  one  particu- 
lar to  let  the  great  soul  have  its  way  through  us  ;  in  other  words, 
to  engage  us  to  obey.  Of  this  pure  nature  every  man  is  at  some 
time  sensible.  Language  cannot  paint  it  with  colors.  It  is  too 
subtle.  It  is  undefinable,  immeasurable ;  but  we  know  that  it 
pervades  and  contains  us.  We  know  that  all  spiritual  being  is 
in  man.  A  wise  old  proverb  says,  '  God  comes  to  see  us  with- 
out bell  : '  that  is,  as  there  is  no  screen  or  ceiling  between  our 
heads  and  the  infinite  heavens,  so  is  there  no  bar  or  wall  in  the 
soul,  where  man,  the  effect,  ceases,  and  God,  the  cause,  begins. 
The  walls  are  taken  away." — Essay  on  the  Over-Soul. 

"  Our  admiration  of  the  antique  is  not  admiration  of  the  old  but 
of  the  natural.  The  Greeks  are  not  reflective  but  perfect  in  their 
senses,  perfect  in  their  health,  with  the  finest  physical  organiza- 
tion in  the  world.  Adults  acted  with  the  simplicity  and  grace  of 
boys.  They  made  vases,  tragedies,  and  statues  such  as  healthy 
senses  should — that  is,  in  good  taste.  Such  things  have  con- 
tinued to  be  made  in  all  ages,  and  are  now,  wherever  a  healthy 
physique  exists,  but,  as  a  class,  from  their  superior  organization, 
they  have  surpassed  all.  They  combine  the  energy  of  manhood 
with  the  engaging  unconsciousness  of  childhood.  Our  reverence 
for  them  is  our  reverence  for  childhood.  Nobody  can  reflect 
upon  an  unconscious  act  with  regret  or  contempt." — Essay  on 
History. 

"  There  is  a  class  of  men,  individuals  of  which  appear  at  long 
intervals,  so  eminently  endowed  with  insight  and  virtue  that  they 
have  been  unanimously  saluted  as  divine,  and  who  seem  to  be 
an  accumulation  of  that  power  we  consider.  Divine  persons  are 
character-born,  or,  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Napoleon,  they  are 
victory-organized.  They  are  usually  received  with  ill-will  be- 
cause they  are  new,  and  because  they  set  abound  to  the  exagger- 
ation that  has  been  made  of  the  personality  of  the  last  divine 
person." — Essay  on  Character. 

7.  Sincerity. — "  There  are  living  organisms  so  transparent 
that  we  can  see  their  hearts  beating  and  their  blood  flowing 
— so  transparent  was  the  life  of  Emerson.  .  .  .  When  a 


EMERSON  791 

man  speaks  the  truth  in  the  spirit  of  truth  his  eye  is  as  clear 
as  the  heavens." — O.  W.  Holmes. 

"  On  every  page  there  is  set  the  strong  stamp  of  sincerity 
and  the  attraction  of  a  certain  artlessness  ;  the  most  awkward 
sentence  rings  true  ;  and  there  is  often  a  pure  and  simple  note 
that  touches  more  than  if  it  were  the  perfection  of  elaborated 
melody." — John  Morley. 

"  Emerson  preached  sincerity  as  among  the  first  virtues. 
He  never  hesitated  to  tell  the  poets,  prose  writers,  reformers, 
fanatics,  who  were  his  friends  and  acquaintances  exactly  what 
he  thought  of  them  ;  and  there  was  never  a  doubt  of  his 
mental  and  moral  nonesty  in  their  reception  of  his  criticisms." 
— E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  In  an  era  of  excessive  reticencyand  hypocrisy,  he  has  no 
concealments.  We  never  suspect  him  of  withholding  half  of 
what  he  knows  or  of  formularizing  for  our  satisfaction  a  be- 
lief which  he  does  not  sincerely  hold.  He  is  transparently 
honest  and  honorable."— -_/.  Nichol. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  That  which  we  are,  we  shall  teach,  not  voluntarily  but  in- 
voluntarily. Thoughts  come  into  our  minds  through  avenues 
which  we  never  voluntarily  opened.  Character  teaches  over  our 
head.  The  infallible  index  of  true  progress  is  found  in  the  tone 
the  man  takes." — Essay  on  the  Over-Soul. 

"Our  culture,  therefore,  must  not  admit  the  arming  of  the 
man.  Let  him  hear  in  season  that  he  is  born  into  the  state  of 
war  .  .  .  and  neither  defying  nor  dreading  the  thunder,  let 
him  take  both  reputation  and  life  in  his  hand,  and  with  perfect 
urbanity  dare  the  gibbet  and  the  mob  by  the  absolute  truth  of 
his  speech  and  the  rectitude  of  his  behavior." — Essay  on  Heroism. 

"  We  know  each  other  very  well, — which  of  us  has  been  just  to 
himself  and  whether  that  which  we  teach  or  behold  is  only  an 
aspiration  or  is  our  honest  effort  also." — Essay  on  the  Over-Soul. 

8.  Optimism. — "  His  persistent  optimism  is  the  root  of 
his  greatness  and  the  source  of  his  charm.  .  .  .  Strong 


792  EMERSON 

as  was  Emerson's  optimism,  and  unconquerable  as  was  his  be- 
lief in  a  good  result  to  emerge  from  all  which  he  saw  going 
on  around  him,  no  misanthropical  satirist  ever  saw  shortcom- 
ings and  absurdities  more  clearly  than  he  did,  or  exposed 
them  more  courageously.  .  .  .  Truly,  his  insight  is  ad- 
mirable ;  his  truth  is  precious.  Yet  the  secret  of  his  effect  is 
not  ever  in  these ;  it  is  in  his  temper.  It  is  in  the  hopeful, 
serene,  beautiful  temper  wherewith  these,  in  Emerson,  are  in- 
dissolubly  joined;  in  which  they  work,  and  have  their  being. 
Never  had  man  such  a  sense  of  the  inexhaustibleness  of 
nature  and  such  hope.  It  was  the  ground  of  his  being  ;  it 
never  failed  him.  .  .  .  Happiness  in  labor,  righteousness, 
and  veracity  ;  in  all  the  life  of  spirit ;  happiness  and  eternal 
hope — that  was  Emerson's  gospel.  There  is  no  man  living  to 
whom,  as  a  writer,  so  many  of  us  feel  and  thankfully  acknowl- 
edge so  great  an  indebtedness  for  ennobling  impulses." — 
Matthew  Arnold. 

"  Emerson's  lines  are  an  emancipation  proclamation  set  to 
music,  a  resurrection  to  that  immortality  and  ideality  he  told 
his  friend  Sanborn  he  held  to.  He  has  not  written  a  verse 
that  does  not  refresh  and  exhilarate.  He  never  for  an  instant 
panders  to  despondency  and  to  despair." — C.  A.  Bartol. 

11  To  him  no  individual  was  ever  so  low  as  to  have  lost  his 
capacity  for  manhood  or  to  have  lost  the  opportunity  of  be- 
coming a  receptacle  of  descending  truth." — G.  W.  Cooke. 

"Emerson  declared  that  truth  is  mighty  and  will  prevail ; 
he  looked  serenely  at  the  ugly  aspect  of  contemporary  life  be- 
cause, as  an  optimist,  he  was  a  herald  of  the  future. 
Carlyle,  as  a  pessimist,  denounced  the  present,  and  threw  all 
the  energy  of  his  vivid  dramatic  genius  into  vitalizing  the 
past.     He  [Emerson]  declared,  even  when  current  events  ap- 
peared ugliest  to  the  philanthropist,  that '  the  highest  thought 
and  the  deepest  love  is  born  with  Victory  on  its  head.'  ' 
E.  P.   \Vhipple. 

"  He  looked  upon  nature  as  pregnant  with  soul ;  for  him 


EMERSON  793 

the  spirit  always  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters.  The  in- 
comprehensible plan  was  perfect :  whatever  is,  is  right.  Thus 
far  he  knew,  and  was  an  optimist  of  reverent  intent." — E.  C. 
Stedman. 

"  In  all  he  is  the  optimist  rather  than  the  pessimist,  the 
philosopher,  not  the  mere  by-stander.  Idealism  appears  to 
him  a  lovely  thing  and  of  eternal  truth.  .  .  .  He  was  an 
optimist,  a  serene  presence,  unexcited  because  confident  of 
the  ultimate  result.  Though  bitterly  attacked,  he  seldom  re- 
torted and  seldom  swerved  from  his  self-confident  course." — 
C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  He  is  the  champion  of  the  republic  ;  he  is  our  future  liv- 
ing in  our  present  and  showing  the  world,  by  anticipation, 
what  sort  of  excellence  we  are  capable  of." — -Julian  Haw- 
thorne. 

"  He  fought  with  the  bright  battalions.  And  their  allies 
of  the  graver  faiths  have  proclaimed  that  his  serenity  of  op- 
timism invalidated  his  authority  as  a  practical  moral  expo- 
nent. "—C.f.  Woodbury. 

"  The  greatness  of  his  work  consists  in  the  measure  of  pure 
genius  and  of  inspiration  to  noble  and  heroic  conduct  which 
it  holds.  As  a  writer  he  had  but  one  aim,  namely,  to  inspire, 
to  wake  up  his  reader  or  hearer  to  the  noblest  and  the  high- 
est that  there  was  in  him.  ...  As  a  prose  writer  there 
is  one  note  in  Emerson  which  we  get  with  the  same  em- 
phasis and  clearness  in  no  other  writer.  I  mean  the  heroic 
note,  the  noble  note  of  manhood  rising  above  the  accidents 
of  fortune  and  the  tyranny  of  circumstances,  the  inspira- 
tion of  courage  and  self-reliance.  ...  In  Emerson 
more  than  in  any  other  there  are  words  that  are  like  banners 
leading  to  victory,  symbolical,  inspiring,  rallying,  seconding 
and  pointing  the  way  to  our  best  endeavor." — -John  Bur- 
roughs. 


794  EMERSON 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Never  mind  the  ridicule,  never  mind  the  defeat :  up  again, 
old  heart !  .  .  .  there  is  victory  yet  for  all  justice  ;  and  the 
true  romance  which  the  world  exists  to  realize  will  be  the  trans- 
formation of  genius  into  practical  power." — Essay  on  Experience. 

"  Yet  when  we  have  said  all  our  fine  things  about  the  arts,  we 
must  end  with  a  frank  confession  that  the  arts,  as  we  know  them, 
are  but  initial.  .  .  .  He  has  conceived  meanly  of  the  re- 
sources of  man  who  believes  that  the-  best  age  of  production  is 
past." — Essay  on  Art. 

"  The  intellect,  with  blazing  eye,  looking  through  history,  from 
the  beginning  onward,  gazes  on  this  blot  [slavery],  and  it  disap- 
pears. The  sentiment  of  Right,  once  very  low  and  indistinct 
but  ever  more  articulate  because  it  is  the  voice  of  the  universe, 
pronounces  Freedom.  The  power  that  built  this  fabric  of  things 
affirms  it  in  the  heart ;  and  in  the  history  of  the  First  of  August 
has  made  a  sign  to  the  ages  of  his  will." — Emancipation  Address- 

Q.  Idealism. — "  Emerson  was  the  champion  of  the  Ideal; 
Carlyle  asserted  the  absolute  dominion  of  fact." — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  He  began  where  many  poets  end,  seeking  at  once  the 
upper  air,  the  region  of  pure  thought  and  ideality.  .  .  . 
Emerson  was  the  freest  and  most  ideal  of  them  all,  and  what 
came  to  him  by  inheritance  or  prophetic  forecast  he  gave  like 
a  victor." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

' '  The  consistent  idealist,  yet  realist  none  the  less,  he  has 
illustrated  the  learning  and  thought  of  former  times  on  the 
noblest  themes,  and  has  come  nearest  of  any  to  emancipating 
the  mind  of  his  own  time  from  the  dreams  of  past  ages." — 
A.  Bronson  Alcott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  The  things  we  now  esteem  fixed  shall,  one  by  one,  detach 
themselves  like  fruit  from  our  experience  and  fall.  .  .  .  The 
soul  looketh  steadily  forward,  creating  a  world  always  before 


EMERSON  795 

her,  leaving  worlds  always  behind  her.  She  has  no  dates  nor 
rites  nor  persons  nor  specialties  nor  men.  The  soul  knows  only 
the  soul;  all  else  is  idle  weeds  for  her  wearing." — Essay  on  the 
Over- Soul. 

"  My  house  stands  in  low  land,  with  limited  outlook,  and  on 
the  skirt  of  the  village.  But  I  go  with  my  friend  to  the  shore  of 
our  little  river ;  and  with  one  stroke  of  the  paddle,  I  leave  the 
village  politics  and  personalities,  yes,  and  the  world  of  villages 
and  personalities  behind,  and  pass  into  a  delicate  realm  of  sun- 
set and  moonlight,  too  bright  almost  for  spotted  man  to  enter 
without  novitiate  and  probation.  We  penetrate  bodily  this  in- 
credible beauty  :  we  dip  our  hands  in  this  painted  element  :  our 
eyes  are  bathed  in  these  lights  and  forms." — Essay  on  Nature. 


10.  Dignity— Gravity— Courtliness.— "That  which 
struck  me  most,  as  distinguishing  him  from  most  other  human 
beings,  is  nobility.  He  is  a  born  nobleman." — Frederika 
Bremer. 

' '  There  was  a  majesty  about  him  beyond  all  other  men  I 
have  known,  and  he  dwelt,  habitually,  in  that  ampler  and 
diviner  air  to  which  most  of  us,  if  ever,  rise  but  occasionally." 
— Lowell. 

"  In  a  time  full  of  personal  pretension,  his  poise  of  modest 
dignity  rebuked  the  fantastic  and  shamed  the  grovelling.  No- 
bility was  in  his  walk,  his  word,  his  every  gesture." — -Julia 
Ward  Howe. 

"  Emerson  had  an  unpretentious  dignity  of  demeanor,  and 
I  felt  as  if  I  had  always  known  him." — Grimm. 

"  There  are  stanzas  in  Emerson's  poems  which  read  like  ora- 
cles. .  .  .  He  announces  them  with  the  confident  tones 
of  the  seer  and  the  prophet.  They  rank  with  the  loftiest  utter- 
ances that  have  ever  proceeded  from  the  awakened  heart  and 
consciousness  and  intellect  of  man." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  Nor  does  his  abruptness  ever  impede  a  true  urbanity. 
The  accent  is  homely  and  the  apparel  plain,  but  his  bearing 
lias  a  friendliness,  a  courtesy,  a  hospitable  humanity,  which 


796  EMERSON 

goes  nearer  to  our  hearts  than  either  literary  decoration  or 
rhetorical  unction." — -John  Morley. 

"  The  epithet  '  sun-accustomed  '  is  applied  to  Emerson's 
piercing  eye  by  one,  a  woman  and  a  poet,  who  marked  the 
effect  of  his  noble  profile.  I,  too,  remember  him  in  this  wise 
and  as  the  most  serene  of  men  :  one  whose  repose,  whose 
tranquillity,  was  not  the  contentment  of  an  idler  housed  in 
worldly  comforts,  but  the  token  of  spiritual  adjustment  to  all 
the  correspondences  of  life  as  the  bravest  and  most  deferen- 
tial, the  proudest  in  self-respect,  yet  recognizing  in  deep  hu- 
mility the  supremacy  of  universal  law." — E.  C.  SteJmati. 

"  The  cast  of  his  character  was  majestic.  The  order  of  his 
mind  was  majestic.  It  was  morally  impossible  for  him  to  de- 
scend from  the  high  plane  of  his  thought  and  life  to  any  lower 
levels ;  so  that  when  he  came  to  the  act  of  written  expression 
he  must  present  '  high  thinking'  in  high  forms  and  illustrate 
in  every  line  and  page  that  elevation  of  spirit  and  sentiment 
on  which  Longinus  so  insists.  ...  If  dignity  of  style 
is  essentially  literary,  'Emerson  furnished  it  beyond  meas- 
ure. .  .  .  His  demeanor  was  marked  by  a  kind  of  clas- 
sical decorum — by  that  lofty  '  urbanity  '  of  presence  and  bear- 
ing which  subdued  all  that  was  unrefined  and  gave  a  courtly 
character  to  the  place  and  hour." — T.  W.  Hunt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  What  is  so  excellent  as  strict  relations  of  amity  when  they 
spring  from  this  deep  root  ?  The  sufficient  reply  to  the  skeptic, 
who  doubts  the  power  and  the  furniture  of  man,  is  in  that  possi- 
bility of  joyful  intercourse  with  persons  which  makes  the  faith 
and  practice  of  all  reasonable  men.  I  know  nothing  which  life 
has  to  offer  so  satisfactory  as  the  profound  good  understanding 
which  can  subsist,  after  much  exchange  of  good  offices,  between 
two  virtuous  men,  each  of  whom  is  sure  of  himself  and  sure  of 
his  friend.  It  is  a  happiness  which  postpones  all  other  gratifica- 
tions, and  makes  politics  and  commerce  and  churches  cheap. 
For  when  men  shall  meet  as  they  ought,  each  a  benefactor,  a 


EMERSON  797 

shower  of  stars  clothed  with  thoughts,  with  deeds,  with  accom- 
plishments, it  should  be  the  festival  of  nature  which  all  things 
announce." — Essay  on  Character. 

"The  entire  end  of  friendship  is  a  commerce  the  most  strict 
and  homely  that  can  be  joined  ;  more  strict  than  any  of  which 
we  have  experience.  It  is  for  aid  and  comfort  through  all  the 
relations  and  passages  of  life  and  death.  It  is  fit  for  serene  days 
and  graceful  gifts  and  country  rambles,  but  also  for  rough  roads 
and  hard  fare,  shipwreck,  poverty,  and  persecution.  It  keeps 
company  with  the  sallies  of  wit  and  the  trances  of  religion. 
We  are  to  dignify  to  each  other  the  daily  needs  and  offices  of 
man's  life  and  embellish  it  by  courage,  wisdom,  and  unity.  It 
should  never  fall  into  something  usual  and  settled,  but  should  be 
alert  and  inventive  and  add  rhyme  and  reason  to  what  was 
drudgery." — Essay  on  Friendship. 

"  The  farmer's  office  is  precise  and  important,  but  you  must 
not  try  to  paint  him  in  rose-color  ;  you  cannot  make  pretty  com- 
pliments to  fate  and  gravitation,  whose  minister  he  is.  He  rep- 
resents the  necessities.  It  is  the  beauty  of  the  great  economy 
of  the  world  that  makes  his  comeliness.  He  bends  to  the  order 
of  the  seasons,  the  weather,  the  soils  and  crops,  as  the  sails  of  a 
ship  bend  to  the  wind.  He  represents  continuous  hard  labor, 
year  in,  year  out,  and  small  gains.  He  is  a  slow  person,  timed 
to  nature  and  not  to  city  watches.  He  takes  the  pace  of  seasons, 
plants,  and  chemistry.  Nature  never  hurries  :  atom  by  atom, 
little  by  little,  she  achieves  her  work." — Essay  on  Farming. 

II.  Dignified  Irony. —  "He  has  subtle  and  kindly 
irony.  .  .  .  No  satirist  ever  saw  shortcomings  and  ab- 
surdities more  clearly  than  he  did  or  exposed  them  more 
courageously.  When  he  sees  'the  meanness,'  as  he  calls  it, 
of  American  politics,  he  congratulates  Washington  on  being 
'long  already  happily  dead,'  on  being  'wrapped  in  his 
shroud  and  forever  safe. '  With  what  subtle  though 

kind  irony  he  follows  the  gradual  withdrawal  in  New  Eng- 
land, in  the  last  half  century,  of  tender  consciences  from  the 
social  organizations — the  bent  for  experiments  such  as  that  of 
Brook  Farm  and  the  like, — follows  it  in  all  its  '  dissidence 


798  EMERSON 

of  dissent  and  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion  ! '  He 
loves  even  to  rally  the  New  Englander  on  his  philanthropic 
activity  and  to  find  his  beneficence  and  its  institution  a 
bore." — Matthew  Arnold. 

"  Even  when  provocation  was  great,  his  satire  was  so  gerrtle 
and  genial  that  it  warmed  even  its  object." — C.  J.  Wood- 
bury. 

"In  judging  of  works  of  immensely  less  importance  [than 
Goethe's  '  Faust'],  which  only  excited  his  ridicule,  his  irony 
was  often  delicious." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Senators  and  presidents  have  climbed  so  high  with  pain 
enough,  not  because  they  think  the  place  specially  agreeable,  but 
as  an  apology  for  real  worth  and  to  vindicate  their  manhood  in 
our  eyes.  This  conspicuous  chair  is  their  compensation  to  them- 
selves for  being  of  a  poor,  cold,  hard  nature.  They  must  do  what 
they  can." — Essay  on  Politics. 

"What  did  the  preacher  mean  by  saying  that  the  good  are 
miserable  in  the  present  life  ?  Was  it  that  houses  and  lands, 
offices,  wine,  horses,  dress,  luxury,  are  had  by  unprincipled  men, 
whilst  the  saints  are  poor  and  despised  ;  and  that  a  compensation 
is  to  be  made  to  these  last  hereafter  by  giving  them  the  like 
gratifications  another  day, — bank-stock  and  doubloons,  venison 
and  champagne  ?  This  must  be  the  compensation  intended  ; 
for  what  else  ?  Is  it  that  they  are  to  have  leave  to  pray  and 
praise  ?  to  love  and  serve  men  ?  Why,  that  they  can  do  now. 
The  legitimate  inference  the  disciple  would  draw  was,  '  We  are 
to  have  such  a  good  time  as  the  sinners  have  now  ;  ' — or,  to  push 
it  to  its  extreme  import, — '  You  sin  now,  we  shall  sin  by-and-by ; 
we  would  sin  now,  if  we  could  ;  not  being  successful,  we  expect 
our  revenge  to-morrow.'  " — Essay  on  Compensation. 

"When  we  see  a  soul  whose 'acts  are  all  regal,  graceful,  and 
pleasant  as  roses,  we  must  thank  God  that  such  things  can  be 
and  are,  and  not  turn  sourly  on  the  angel  and  say,  '  Crump  is  a 
better  man  with  his  grunting  resistance  to  all  his  native  devils.' " 
— Essay  on  Spiritual  Laws. 


EMERSON  799 

"  The  world  is  filled  with  the  proverbs  and  acts  and  winkings 
of  a  base  prudence,  which  is  a  devotion  to  matter  ;  as  if  we  pos- 
sessed no  other  faculties  than  the  palate,  the  nose,  the  touch,  the 
eye  and  ear  ;  a  prudence  which  adores  the  Rule  of  Three,  which 
never  subscribes,  which  gives  never,  which  lends  seldom,  and 
asks  but  one  question  of  any  project — Will  it  bake  bread  ?  This 
is  a  disease  like  a  thickening  of  the  skin  until  the  vital  organs  are 
destroyed.  But  culture,  revealing  the  high  origin  of  the  appar- 
ent world  and  aiming  at  the  perfection  of  the  man  as  the  end, 
degrades  everything  else,  as  health  and  bodily  life,  into  means." 
— Essay  on  Prudence. 


LOWELL,  1819-1881 

Biographical  Outline. — James  Russell  Lowell,  born  at 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  February  22,  1819  ;  father  a  Congrega- 
tional minister,  and  both  parents  of  English  descent ;  in  1827 
Lowell  enters  the  school  of  William  Wells,  near  "  Elmwood," 
as  Lowell's  home  was  called  ;  he  enters  Harvard  College  as 
a  Freshman  in  1834;  forms  there  an  intimate  friendship  with 
George  B.  Loring ;  is  only  a  fair  student,  but  evinces  an 
early  love  for  literature,  especially  poetry ;  becomes  secretary 
of  the  ' '  Hasty  Pudding  Club, ' '  whose  records  were  then  kept 
in  verse  ;  is  suspended  for  several  months  during  his  Senior 
year  for  neglect  of  studies;  passes  the  interval  studying  under 
a  tutor  at  Concord,  where  he  meets  Emerson  and  Thoreau ; 
writes  the  poem  for  Class  Day  in  1838  (a  satire  on  the  Aboli- 
tionists and  the  Concord  Transcendentalists),  but  is  not  allowed 
to  read  it  because  of  his  suspension,  then  in  effect ;  it  is  printed 
in  pamphlet  form  for  the  class ;  Lowell  passes  his  final  exam- 
inations and  takes  A. B.  with  his  classmates  in  June,  1838; 
first  thinks  seriously  of  entering  the  ministry  and  then  takes 
up  the  law  ;  by  October,  1838,  he  is  reading  Blackstone 
"  with  as  good  a  grace  and  as  few  wry  faces  as  I  may  ;  "  he 
plans  a  dramatic  poem  on  Cromwell,  and  regrets  "being  com- 
pelled to  say  farewell  to  the  muses  ;  "  in  1839  he  writes,  "  I 
am  schooling  myself  and  shaping  my  theory  of  poetry  ;  "  dur- 
ing 1839  he  writes  verses  ("pottery  ")  for  the  Boston  Post 
and  for  the  Advertiser;  in  December,  1839,  meets  Miss  Maria 
White,  who  "  knows  more  poetry  than  anyone  I  am  acquainted 
with  ;  "  receives  LL.B.  from  the  Harvard  Law  School  in  the 
summer  of  1840  ;  takes  up  the  law  more  seriously  because  of 

800 


LOWELL  801 

his  father's  heavy  financial  losses  at  that  time  and  because  of 
his  engagement  to  Miss  White  in  the  autumn  of  1840  ;  during 
1839-40  he  contributes  verses  to  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine 
and  to  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger  under  his  own  name 
and  under  the  pseudonym  of  "  Hugh  Percival ;  "  publishes, 
early  in  1841,  a  collection  of  his  own  poems  entitled  "  A 
Year's  Life,"  which  wins  some  recognition  ;  spends  the 
winter  of  1842—43  in  New  York,  undergoing  treatment  by  an 
oculist,  and  makes  valuable  acquaintances,  including  Page,  the 
artist,  and  Briggs,  the  "  Henry  Franca"  of  the  "  Fable  for 
Critics;"  during  1841-42  he  begins  his  life-long  effort  to 
secure  international  copyright,  and  contributes  poetry  to  the 
Boston  Miscellany,  Graham' s  Magazine,  and  the  Democratic 
Review,  receiving  from  ten  to  thirty  dollars  for  each  poem  ; 
in  June,  1843,  writes  to  Loring:  "I  am  more  and  more 
assured  every  day  that  I  shall  yet  do  something  that  will  keep 
my  name  (and  perhaps  my  body)  alive.  My  wings  were 
never  so  strong  as  now.  So  hurrah  for  a  niche  and  a  laurel ! " 
publishes  his  second  volume  of  poems  in  December,  1843, 
and  resolves  to  devote  himself  to  literature  rather  than  law  ; 
during  1844  he  publishes  "  Conversations  on  Some  of  the 
Older  Poets"  (not  since  republished) ,  and  marries  Maria 
White,  another  poet,  in  December  of  that  year  ;  they  spend 
the  winter  in  Philadelphia,  where  Lowell,  doubtless  influenced 
by  his  wife's  strong  abolitionist  sentiments,  becomes  a  con- 
tributor to  the  Freeman,  an  anti-slavery  paper  ;  he  returns  to 
Cambridge  in  June,  1845  ;  in  1846  becomes  a  regular  con- 
tributor to  the  Anti-Slavery  Standard  at  a  salary  of  $500  per 
annum  for  a  weekly  contribution  in  prose  or  verse  ;  continues 
this  connection  till  the  spring  of  1850,  contributing  many  of 
"  The  Biglow  Papers"  and  his  poems  on  "Garrison,"  "Free- 
dom," "  Eurydice,"  "  The  Parting  of  the  Ways,"  "  Beaver 
Brook,"  and  "  The  First  Snowfall,"  the  latter  in  memory  of 
his  first  child,  Blanche,  who  died  in  March,  1847,  aged  fifteen 
months  ;  during  1848  he  collects  and  publishes  the  first  series 


802  LOWELL 

of  "The  Biglow  Papers,"  publishes  "A  Fable  for  Critics" 
(anonymously),  and  contributes  "  Sir  Launfal  "  to  the  North 
American  Review  ;  the  entire  first  edition  of  "  The  Biglow  Pa- 
pers" is  sold  within  a  week  after  publication ;  during  the  winter 
of  1849-50  he  publishes  a  collective  edition  of  his  poems,  enter- 
tains Frederika  Bremer,  and  loses  his  second  child,  Rose,  then 
three  years  old,  concerning  whom  he  writes  "After  the  Burial  " 
(first  published  in  1869)  ;  sails  for  Italy  in  July,  1851,  hoping 
thus  to  improve  his  wife's  failing  health,  and  selling  a  part  of 
his  patrimony  for  the  expenses  of  the  journey ;  he  severs  his 
connection  with  the  Anti-Slavery  Standard  in  April,  1850, 
saying :  "It  has  never  been  a  matter  of  dollars  and  cents  be- 
tween us,  for  I  might  have  earned  much  more  in  other  ways. 
For  every  poem  which  has  been  printed  in  the 
Standard  I  could  have  got  four  times  the  money  paid  me  by 
the  committee"  [controlling  the  Standard\\  loses  his  only 
son,  then  in  his  second  year,  at  Rome  in  the  spring  of  1852, 
and  returns  to  America  in  the  following  autumn  ;  writes  little 
during  his  first  foreign  tour,  saying,  "I  have  been  observ- 
ing; "  contributes,  in  September,  1853,  his  "  Moosehead 
Journal"  to  Putnam' s  Magazine,  in  which  are  also  published 
about  that  time  several  of  Mrs.  Lowell's  poems ;  his  wife  dies 
in  October,  1853,  leaving  him  one  child,  a  daughter  ;  Lowell 
writes,  "I  understand  now  what  is  meant  by  'the  waters 
have  gone  over  me;1"  he  spends  the  summer  of  185431 
Beverly,  Mass. ;  prepares  a  series  of  lectures  on  the  English 
poets  during  the  autumn,  and  delivers  the  same  at  the  Lowell 
Institute,  in  Boston,  during  the  following  winter,  thus  winning 
his  spurs  as  a  critic;  contributes  "  Cambridge  Twenty  Years 
Ago  "  to  Putnam' s  Magazine  in  January,  1854,  and  "  Pictures 
from  Appledore "  to  the  Crayon  for  December,  1854;  in 
January,  1855,  he  is  offered  the  chair  of  French  and  Spanish 
Literature  at  Harvard  ("at  a  salary  that  will  make  me  inde- 
pendent"), thus  succeeding  Ticknor  and  Longfellow;  ac- 
cepts the  Harvard  chair  on  condition'  of  being  allowed  a  year 


LOWELL  803 

in  Europe  for  preparation  ;  lectures  in  Wisconsin  and  other 
central  Western  States  early  in  the  spring  of  1855,  "going 
home  with  $600  in  my  pocket;  "  publishes  "  Invita  Minerva" 
in  the  Crayon  for  May,  1855, and  sails  for  Paris  in  June  ;  meets 
Leigh  Hunt  and  Lowell's  friend  Story,  the  sculptor,  in  Lon- 
don, where  Thackeray  gives  a  dinner  in  Lowell's  honor  at  the 
Garrick  Club ;  to  Germany  early  in  the  autumn  of  1855,  stop- 
ping at  Bruges,  Antwerp,  and  The  Hague,  and  settling  at  Dres- 
den to  study  the  German  language  and  literature ;  remains  at 
Dresden,  "  working  like  a  dog — no,  a  pig,"  passing  a  wretch- 
ed winter,  "out  of  health  and  out  of  spirits; "  in  March,  1856, 
he  starts  for  Italy ;  visits  Bologna,  Parma,  Verona,  Modena, 
Florence,  Naples ;  recovers  his  health  and  returns  to  Dresden 
in  June,  1856;  to  Paris  in  July,  and  back  to  America  early  in 
the  autumn,  to  take  up  the  duties  of  his  professorship,  which 
he  held  for  seventeen  years  thereafter  ;  gives  up  his  home  at 
Elmwood  temporarily  and  goes  to  reside  with  his  brother-in- 
law,  Dr.  Howe,  in  Cambridge ;  gives  two  courses  of  lectures 
each  year  at  Harvard;  in  the  summer  of  1857  marries  Miss 
Frances  Dunlap,  and  in  the  following  autumn  becomes  editor  of 
the  then  newly  established  Atlantic  Monthly  ;  lectures  in  New 
York  City  in  February,  1857  ;  during  1858  writes  that  he  is 
"  working  often  fifteen  hours  a  day;  "  in  1859  begins  a  cor- 
respondence with  Thomas  Hughes ;  returns  to  Elmwood  in 
the  spring  of  1861  ;  during  the  same  year  writes  "The  Wash- 
ers of  the  Shroud,"  begins  the  second  series  of  "  The  Biglow 
Papers,"  and  resigns  the  editorship  of  the  Atlantic  in  May, 
1861  ;  gives  up  "  The  Biglow  Papers  "  in  June,  1862,  saying, 
"  It's  no  use  .  .  .  my  brain  must  lie  fallow  a  while  ;" 
early  in  1864  becomes  joint  editor  of  the  North  American 
Review  with  Professor  C.  E.  Norton  ;  edits  a  volume  of  "  Old 
Dramatists  "  in  August,  1864  ;  in  July,  1865,  writes  and  reads 
at  the  Harvard  memorial  exercises  his  "  Commemoration 
Ode" — "so  rapt  with  the  fervor  of  conception  as  I  have  not 
been  these  ten  years ;"  but,  a  little  later,  is  "  ashamed  at  hav- 


804  LOWELL 

ing  been  again  tempted  into  thinking  that  I  could  write  poetry, 
a  delusion  from  which  I  have  been  tolerably  free  these  dozen 
years;"  continues. his  studies  in  German  literature  in   1865, 
but  chafes  at  the  drudgery  of  his  professorship,  saying,  "  If  I 
can  sell  some  of  my  land  and  slip  my  neck  out  of  this  collar 
again,  I  shall  be  a  man.     .     .     .     My  professorship  is  wearing 
me  out ;"  concerning  his  financial  receipts  from  his  magazine 
articles,  he  writes  in  December,  1865,  "  For  some  years  I  have 
had  twice  fifty  dollars  for  whatever  I  write  and  three  or  four 
times  fifty  for  a  long  poem;"   becomes  a  contributor  to  The 
Nation  in    1866,   and  begins  a  correspondence  with  Leslie 
Stephen;    prints  his  last   "Biglow  Paper"  in  the  Atlantic 
for  May,  1866,  and  publishes  during  that  year  a  complete 
series  of  "The  Biglow  Papers"   with   a  long  introduction 
on  "  Yankeeisms "   ("getting   $820  for  my  last  six  weeks' 
work");  writes  "  The  Nightingale  in  the  Study  "  in   1867, 
and  continues  his  "annual  dissatisfaction"   of  lecturing  at 
Harvard  ;  in  October,  1868,  publishes  a  new   volume  of  old 
poems  entitled  "  Under  the  Willows ;"   during  the  summer  of 
1869  writes  his  long  poem  "The  Cathedral"  (published  in 
the  Atlantic  for  January,  1870)  ;  in  the  winter  of  1870  visits 
Washington,  stopping    to  lecture  at   Baltimore;   during  the 
summer  of  1870  he  studies  old  French  metrical  romances, 
averaging  twelve  hours  a  day,  and  writes,  "  I  long  to  give 
myself  to  poetry  again  before  I  get  so  old  that  I  have  only 
strength  and  no  music  left;"  entertains  Thomas  Hughes  at 
Elmwood  in  the  autumn  ;  in  July,  1871,  sells  "  my  birthright 
[part  of  the  land  at  Elmwood]  for  a  mess  of  pottage,  "and 
writes  to  Leslie  Stephen,  "  It  will  give   me  about  $5,000  a 
year,  and  Mabel  [his  daughter]  about  $400   more;"  he  re- 
tains the  Elmwood  house  with  two  acres  ;  publishes  "  Among 
My  Books"  in  1870  and  "My  Study  Windows"  in  1871  ; 
resigns  the  Harvard  professorship   in   1872,  writing  to  Miss 
Norton,  "  It  takes  a  good  while  to  slough  off  the  effect  of  sev- 
enteen years  of  pedagogy ; ' '  publishes  his  essay  on  Dante,  and 


LOWELL  805 

sails  for  Europe  the  third  time  in  1872  ;  lands  at  Queenstown, 
and  visits  Dublin  and  Chester  en  route  to  London  ;  thence  to 
Paris  ("  picking  up  books  here  and  there  "),  where  he  meets 
Emerson;  in  June,  1873,  receives  D.C.L.  from  Oxford  and 
leaves  Paris,  making  a  tour  of  Belgium,  Holland,  and  Ger- 
many and  reaching  Venice  in  October ;  thence  to  Flor- 
ence ;  at  Rome  in  January  and  February,  1874,  and  to 
Naples  in  March  ;  while  at  Rome  writes  his  ' '  Elysian  Argosy  ' ' 
(published  in  the  Atlantic  for  May,  1874)  ;  back  to  Paris  in 
May,  1874,  and  to  America  in  July;  during  1875  publishes 
in  the  Atlantic  his  essay  on  Spenser  and  his  Centennial  Ode, 
"  Under  the  Old  Elm,"  and  in  book  form  the  second  series  of 
"  Among  My  Books,"  containing  the  essays  on  Dante,  Spen- 
ser, Wordsworth,  Shelley,  and  Keats  ;  lectures  again  at  Har- 
vard, and  writes  for  The  Nation  two  poems  entitled  "The 
World's  Fair,  1876,"  and  "  Tempora  Mutantur"  both  of 
which  excite  some  popular  condemnation  ;  he  becomes  active- 
ly interested  in  political  reform  in  April,  1876,  and  is  made, 
successively,  a  delegate  to  the  State  and  national  conventions 
— the  latter  at  Cincinnati,  where  Hayes  was  nominated  ;  writes 
his  "  Ode  for  the  Fourth  of  July,  1876,"  read  at  the  Philadel- 
phia Centennial  Celebration ;  declines  repeated  popular  invi- 
tations to  run  for  Congress,  is  made  a  Presidential  elector,  and 
continues  lecturing  at  Harvard  in  the  autumn  of  1876  ;  visits 
Washington  in  February,  1877,  stopping  at  Baltimore  to  give 
a  course  of  lectures  at  Johns  Hopkins  University  ;  is  offered 
by  President  Hayes  the  embassy  to  Austria  and  afterward  that 
to  Germany,  but  declines  both  ;  in  June,  1877,  is  appointed 
Minister  to  Spain  and  sails  thither  in  July,  visiting  Paris  and 
London  en  route  and  reaching  Madrid  in  August;  finds  his 
ministerial  duties  unexpectedly  heavy,  and  suffers  from  the 
gout  (as  he  had  suffered  for  years)  ;  visits  Seville,  Cordova, 
and  Granada  during  the  winter  of  1877-78  ;  in  the  spring  of 
1878  makes  a  two  months'  tour  through  Southern  France, 
Italy,  and  Greece,  returning  to  Madrid  in  July ;  entertains 


8o5  LOWELL 

General  Grant  there  in  October;  on  January  19,  1870, 
receives  his  appointment  as  Minister  to  England,  and  ac- 
cepts on  condition  of  a  two  months'  interim  ;  in  the  autumn 
of  1 88 1  he  makes  another  tour  through  Germany  and  Italy, 
as  far  as  Rome,  returning  to  London  in  January,  1882  ; 
during  1884  he  is  elected  Lord  Rector  of  St.  Andrew's,  and 
receives  a  doctor's  degree  from  the  University  of  Edinburgh 
and  LL.D.  from  Harvard;  delivers  his  address  on  "De- 
mocracy" at  Birmingham  in  October,  1884,  and  makes 
several  other  public  addresses  in  England,  about  this  time, 
winning  great  popularity  there;  he  incurs  the  hostility  of 
Irish-American  politicians  by  certain  official  action  during 
1884 ;  during  1885  he  loses  his  second  wife  in  London,  and  is 
recalled  by  President  Cleveland,  reaching  America  in  June ; 
unable  to  bear  the  associations  at  Elmwood,  he  settles  at 
Southborough,  Mass.,  with  his  daughter  and  her  family  ;  pub- 
lishes "Democracy  and  other  Addresses "  in  1886,  and  re- 
visits London  during  the  summer  ;  receives  great  public,  hon- 
ors, visits  Gladstone,  and  returns  in  the  autumn  ;  in  Novem- 
ber, 1886,  delivers  an  address  on  the  25oth  anniversary  of  the 
founding  of  Harvard;  in  1887  is  receiving  $2,000  a  year 
from  his  general  copyrights  ;  spends  the  summer  of  1887  in 
England  ;  during  1888  re-edits  and  publishes  his  poems,  at- 
tends the  anniversary  of  the  University  of  Bologna  as  Har- 
vard's representative,  and  spends  the  summer  in  England,  at 
Whitby;  is  at  Whitby  again  in  1889,  returning  to  America 
in  October  and  settling  with  his  daughter  at  his  old  Elmwood 
home;  is  severely  ill  during  the  spring  of  1890;  dies  at  Elm- 
wood  August  12,  1891. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY   ON   LOWELL'S   STYLE. 

Stedman,  E.  C.,  "Poets  of  America."     Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  Co.,  304-348. 
Curtis,  G.  W.,  "Orations  and  Addresses."     New  York,  1894,  Harper, 

3  :  367-398. 


LOWELL  807 

Haweis,    H.    R.,    "American    Humorists."     London,    1883,    Chatto  & 

Windus,  73-134- 
Underwood,   F.  H.,  "James   Russell   Lowell,  the  Poet  and  the  Man." 

Boston,  1893,  Lee  &  Shepard. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."     New  York,  1893,   Putnam, 

2  :   186-204. 
Whipple,    E.    P.,    "Essays  and   Reviews."     Boston,    1861,  Ticknor  & 

Fields,  68-71. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "Outlooks on  Society."  Boston,  1888, Ticknor,  306-314. 
Whipple,  E.  P.,  "American  Literature."  Boston,  1887,  Ticknor,  78-79. 
Bungay,  G.  W.,  "Off-Hand  Sketches."  New  York,  1854,  Dewitt  & 

Douglass,  394-400. 
Underwood,  F.  H.,  "James   Russell   Lowell,    a  Biographical   Sketch." 

Boston,  1882,  Osgood  &  Co. 
James,  G.  P.  R.,  "Essays  in  London,"  etc.     New  York,  1893,  Harper, 

44-80. 
Stead,  W.,  "  Character  Sketches. "     London,  1892,  Hodder  &  Stoughton, 

120-134. 

Taylor,  B.,  "Critical  Essays."     New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  298-301. 
Nichol,  J.,  "American  Literature."     Edinburgh,  1855,  Black,  220-412. 
Wilkinson,  W.  C.,  "Free  Lance."     New  York,  1874,  Mason,  50. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  "Works."     New  York,  1855,  Redfield,  3:   275-282. 
Lowell,   J.    R.,   "Fable    for    Critics"    (Lowell's  Works).     Cambridge, 

1892,  Houghton,  Mifnin  &  Co.,  3  :   1-95. 

"  Lowell,  J.  R.,  Letters  of  "  (C.  E.  Norton).     New  York,  1894,  Harper. 
Brown,  E.  E.,  "  Life  of  J.  R.  Lowell."     Boston,  1887,  Ticknor. 
Welsh,  A.  H.,  "Development  of  English  Literature."     Chicago,  1882, 

Griggs,  2  :  39O-393- 

Curtis,  G.  W.,  "Homes  of  American  Authors."     New  York,  1853,  Put- 
nam, 349-366. 
Underwood,  F.  H.,  "  Builders  of  American  Literature."     Boston,  1893, 

Lee  &  Shepard. 
North  American  Review,  52  :  452-466  (G.  S.  Hillard) ;  58  :  283-299  (C.  C. 

Felton);  66:  458-482  (F.  Bowen);  153:  460-467  (R.  H.  Stoddard). 
Putnam's  Magazine,  I  :  547-558  (W.  S.  Thayer). 
North  British  Review,  46 :  472-482. 

Scribner's  Monthly,  4:   75-86  and  227-237  and  339-345  (W.  C.  Wil- 
kinson). 

Harper's  Magazine,  62  :  252-273  (F.  H.  Underwood). 
Century  Magazine,  2:  97-112  (Stedman) ;   21  :    113-118  (Woodberry). 
The  Literary  World,  16  :  217-225  (C.  D.  Warner);  22  :  290-291  (J.  W. 

Parsons). 


808  LOWELL 

Fortnightly  Review,  38:   78-89  (H.   D.  Traill);   50:  310-324  (Sidney 

Low). 

The  Nineteenth  Century,  17:  988-1008(0.  B.  Smith). 
The  Spectator,  58  :   744-745  (H.  D.  Traill) ;  66  :   693-694. 
The  Nation,  53  :   116-118  (T.  W.  Higginson). 
The  Critic,  9:   75-76   (Editor);  8:   151-160  (G.   E.  Woodberry) ;   16 : 

82-83  and  291-292  (Editor);    16  :  92-99  (C.  Wingate). 
Chicago  Dial,    7  : '241-243  (M.   B.   Anderson);    12:   133-135  (O.   F. 

Emerson);  15  :  291-293  (E.  G.  J.). 
Andover  Review,  16  :  294-300  (Editor). 
The  New  Englander,  29:  125-136;  7:  63-72  (D.  March);  29:  477- 

512  (D.  H.  Chamberlain). 
The  Arena,  14  :   504-529  (H.  Garland). 
The  Athentzum,  2  ('91) :   257-259  (T.  Watts). 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  150:  454-460  and  589-590  (W.  W.  Story). 
Contemporary  Review,  60  :  477-498  (F.  H.  Underwood). 
New  England  Magazine,  5  :   183-192  (E.  E.  Hale)  and  398-401  (Key- 

ser). 

Unitarian  Review,  36  :  436-455  (J.  W.  Chadwick). 
Good  Words,  28:  521-527  (F.  H.  Underwood). 
Review  of  Reviews,  4 :   287-291  (J.   F.  Jamieson)  and  291-294  (C.  F. 

Winchester)  and  294-296  (R.  D.  Jones)  and  296-310  (W.  T.  Stead). 
The  Writer,  5  :    183-193  (J.  H.  Holmes). 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  15:  464-487  (Haweis). 


PARTICULAR  CHARACTERISTICS. 

I.  Culture — Allusiveness. — If  Spenser  is  "the  poet's 
poet,"  Lowell  is  certainly  the  poet  of  the  man  of  culture. 
While  he  is  generally  intelligible  to  the  ordinary  reader,  his 
pages  abound  in  allusions  and  evidences  of  erudition  that  de- 
light the  more  cultivated  classes.  The  pleasure  felt  on  recog- 
nizing the  force  of  some  allusion,  perhaps  hidden  from  the 
ordinary  mind,  is  doubtless  akin  to  that  felt  at  guessing  a 
conundrum  or  at  being  recognized  in  company  by  some  emi- 
nent personage. 

"  He  was  a  scholar  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  possessing 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  English  literature  and  critically  con- 


LOWELL  809 

versant  with  other  literature  as  well — the  classics  of  Greece 
and  Rome  and  the  classics  of  Spain  and  Italy,  France  and 
Germany.  A  scholar,  not  a  pedant,  he  mastered  his  learning, 
and  it  profited  him  in  the  large  horizons  which  it  disclosed  to 
his  spiritual  vision  and  in  the  felicity  and  dignity  which  it 
imparted  to  his  style.  Gentleman  and  scholar  in  all  that  he 
wrote,  there  is  that  in  his  writing  which  declares  a  greater 
intellect  than  it  reveals." — R.  H.  Stoddard. 

"The  best  things  in  all  tongues  naturally  gravitated  to 
him  ;  and  it  was  difficult  for  any  but  the  most  curiously  learned 
to  say  whether  he  seemed  more  at  home  with  the  philosophic 
authors  of  Germany,  the  great  poet  of  Italy,  the  immortal  ro- 
mancer of  Spain,  the  brilliant  wit  and  classic  finish  of  the 
French,  or  with  the  long  line  of  poets,  chroniclers,  and  think- 
ers of  our  old  home.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  in  Lowell's 
odes  obscure  to  a  well-trained  mind ;  but,  unfortunately,  all 
minds  are  not  so  trained  as  to  dissolve  his  thought  from  out 
the  richly  incrusted  diction.  So  it  remains  that  the  stronger 
poems  of  Lowell  are  beyond  the  comprehension  of  all  but 
cultivated  readers.  .  .  .  Lowell's  prose  is  like  cloth  of 
gold — too  splendid  and  too  cumbrous  for  every-day  wear." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  He  is  not  a  writer  for  dullards,  and  to  read  him  enjoyably 
is  a  point  in  evidence  of  a  liberal  education.  ...  A 
pedant  quotes  for  the  sake  of  a  display  of  his  learning ;  Lowell, 
because  he  has  mastered  every  thing  connected  with  his  theme. 
He  is  not  only  a  man  of  letters  but  a  fine  exemplar 
of  culture,  and  of  culture  so  generous  as  to  be  thought  supra- 
American  by  those  observers  who,  while  pronouncing  him  a 
citizen  of  the  world,  are  careful  to  exclude  this  country  from 
his  range.  .  .  .  The  fine  thing  about  Lowell  was  his 
plentiful  and  original  genius.  This  was  so  rich  ihat  he  never 
was  compelled,  like  many  writers,  to  hoard  his  thoughts  or  be 
miserly  with  his  bright  sayings.  When  warmed  by  compan- 
ionship and  in  talk  he  gave  full  play  to  this  spontaneity,  and 


8 10  LOWELL 

said  enough  witty  and  epigrammatic  and  poetic  things  to  set 
up  a  dozen  small  talkers  or  writers." — £.  C.  Stedman. 

"  It  was  a  pleasure  to  feel  that  he  was  accomplished  up  to 
the  hilt.  Those  who  didn't  like  him  pronounced  him  too 
accomplished,  too  omniscient." — Henry  James. 

"  One  whom  studious  search  through  varied  lore  has  taught 
The  streams,  the  rills,  the  fountain-heads  of  thought." 

—  O.  W.  Holmes. 

"Lowell's  poetry  has  simply  gone  on  perfecting  itself  in 
form  and  finish  till  now  he  is  as  complete  a  specimen  of  '  a 
literary  man's  poet ' — of  the  consummate  artist  in  expression 
— as  it  would  be  easy  to  find  in  a  summer  day's  hunt  through 
a  well-filled  library."  "Around  the  stormy  topics  of  war, 
slavery,  and  politics  plays  an  incessant  summer  lightning  of 
literary,  antiquarian,  and  instructive  social  and  domestic 
twitter."—  H.  R.  Haweis. 

"He  was  not  merely  a  professional  literary  man,  but  one 
to  whom  self-improvement  was  a  sacred  calling  and  who  as- 
signed to  culture  that  same  unique  place  in  humanity's  achieve- 
ments as  did  that  engaging  mediaeval  blue-stocking,  Roswit 
of  Gandersheim,  when  she  declared,  '  Homo  animal  capax 
discipline?  I  would  give  Lowell  his  high  rank  in  American 
culture  perhaps  for  no  other  reason  more  than  because  he  was 
both  learned  and  liberal  in  scholarship.  He  held  the  firm 
middle  ground  between  the  unbalanced  aesthete  and  the  sta- 
tistical grammarian,  who  dwells  among  the  very  dry  bones  of 
dead  literature." — -James  I.  Hatfield. 

At  the  time  of  Lowell's  death  a  writer  in  the  London  Times 
declared  :  "  With  him  there  passes  away  one  of  the  very  few 
Americans  who  were  the  equals  of  any  son  of  the  Old  World — 
of  any  Frenchman  or  any  Englishman — in  that  indefinable 
mixture  of  qualities  which  we  sum  up,  for  want  of  a  better 
word,  under  the  name  of  culture.  ...  .  Whenever  official 


LOWELL  8ll 

business  was  not  too  heavy,  he  invariably  read  for  a  minimum 
of  four  hours  a  day.  This  did  not  include  the  time  that  he 
gave  to  ephemeral  literature ;  it  was  the  time  that  he  spent  in 
the  serious  reading  of  books,  generally  old  books." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  As  he  shrank  away  after  the  last  thaw,  he  built  for  himself 
the  most  exquisite  caverns  of  ice  to  run  through,  if  not  '  measure- 
less toman '  like  those  of  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  yet  perhaps  more 
pleasing  for  their  narrowness  than  for  their  grandeur.  What  a 
cunning  silver-smith  is  frost !  The  rarest  workmanship  of  Delhi 
or  Genoa  copies  him  but  clumsily,  as  if  the  fingers  of  all  other 
artists  were  thumbs.  Fernwork  and  lacework  and  filagree  in 
endless  variety,  and  under  it  all  the  water  tinkles  like  a  distant 
guitar,  or  drums  like  a  tambourine,  or  gurgles  like  the  Tokay  of 
an  anchorite's  dream.  Beyond  doubt  there  is  a  fairy  procession 
marching  along  those  frail  arcades  and  translucent  corridors." — 
A  Good  Word  for  Winter. 

"  Credulity,  as  a  mental  and  moral  phenomenon,  manifests 
itself  in  widely  different  ways,  according  as  it  chances  to  be  the 
daughter  of  fancy  or  terror.  The  one  lies  warm  about  the  heart 
as  Folk-lore,  fills  moonlight  dells  with  dancing  fairies,  sets  out  a 
meal  for  the  Brownie,  hears  the  tinkle  of  airy  bridle-bells  as 
Tamlane  rides  away  with  the  Queen  of  Dreams,  changes  Pluto 
and  Proserpine  into  Oberon  and  Titania,  and  makes  friends  with 
unseen  powers  as  Good  Folk." — Essay  on  Witchcraft. 

"  I  had  seen  many  lakes,  ranging  from  that  of  Virgil's  Cumean 
to  that  of  Scott's  Caledonian  Lady;  but  Moosehead,  within  two 
days  of  me,  had  never  enjoyed  the  profit  of  being  mirrored  in  my 
retina.  At  the  sound  of  the  name,  no  reminiscential  atoms  (ac- 
cording to  Kenelm  Digby's  Theory  of  Association — as  good  as 
any)  stirred  and  marshalled  themselves  in  my  brain.'' — Moose- 
head  Journal. 

"  I  say  nothing  of  such  matters  as  the  montagna  bruna  on 
which  Ulysses  was  wrecked.  .  .  .  Faustus,  Don  Juan  and 
Tannhauserare  the  last  ghosts  of  Legend  that  linger  almost  until 
the  Gallic  cockcrow  of  universal  enlightenment  and  disillusion.'' 
— Leaves  from  My  Journal. 


8l2  LOWELL 

2.  Independence  —  Manliness  —  Vigor. — From  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  his  career,  Lowell  exemplified  by 
contrast  the  force  of  his  own  stirring  lines, 

' '  They  are  slaves  who  dare  not  be 
In  the  right  with  two  or  three." 

"  He  never  feared  and  never  shirked  the  obligation  to  be 
positive.  .  .  .  When  he  felt  at  all  he  felt  altogether — was 
always  on  the  same  side  as  his  likings  and  loyalties.  He  had 
no  experimental  sympathies,  and  no  part  of  him  was  traitor 
to  the  rest.  .  .  .  If  he  was  an  admirable  man  of  letters, 
there  should  be  no  want  of  emphasis  on  the  first  term  of  the 
title.  He  was  indeed  in  literature  a  man  essentially  mascu- 
line, upright,  downright." — Henry  James. 

"  The  singer  who  was  willing  to  sacrifice  so  much  for  the 
sake  of  an ti -slavery  and  unpopular  religious  movements  and  to 
write  a  whole  series  of  poems,  with  his  utmost  force,  against 
a  popular  war,  is  certainly  not  amenable  to  the  charge  of 
weakness." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  In  Lowell's  verse  there  was  something  of  Wordsworth's 
simplicity,  something  of  Tennyson's  sweetness  and  musical 
flow,  and  something  more  of  the  manly  earnestness  of  the 
Elizabethan  poets." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

11  A  poet,  he  was  more  than  a  poet ;  a  critic,  he  was  more 
than  a  critic;  a  thinker,  he  was  more  than  a  thinker  ;  from 
beginning  to  end  he  was  a  man — a  man  in  every  fibre  and 
every  feeling,  right-minded,  clear-minded,  strong-minded, 
honest,  honorable,  courageous,  and  resolute." — R.  H.  Stod- 
dard. 

"  If  there  is  a  clew  that  may  be  used,  it  is  to  be  sought  in 
his  individuality,  in  the  fact  that  his  ten  talents  have  some- 
how been  melted  and  fused  into  one  and  that  the  greatest — 
the  talent  of  being  a  man  first  and  everything  else  afterward." 
— G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"As  he  allowed  no  church  or  sect  to  dictate  his  religious 


LOWELL  813 

views  or  control  his  daily  conduct,  so  he  permitted  no  party 
to  direct  his  political  action.  He  was  a  Whig,  an  abolition- 
ist, a  Republican,  a  Democrat,  according  to  his  conception 
of  the  public  exigency." — George  William  Curtis. 

"  Lowell  was  himself  alone,  wearing  his  academic  garb,  yet 
hasting  to  throw  aside  his  crook  at  the  sound  of  the  trumpet." 
— E.  C.  Stedman. 

"His  taste  for  experiment  and  imitation  did  not  for  a 
moment  lead  him  to  intellectual  servility.  If  he  sometimes 
played  on  other  men's  instruments,  he  played  his  own  tune. 
It  was  the  tune  which  he  had  heard  in  the  Atlantic  breezes  as 
they  swept  through  the  trees  round  the  old  home  at  Elmwood. 
.  His  whole  life  shows  that  he  had,  and  had  in  over- 
flowing abundance,  what  most  Americans  lack — moral  cour- 
age, the  high-bred  courage  to  defy  that  voice  of  the  people 
which  is  not  yet  the  voice  of  God.  ...  In  courage,  in 
truthfulness,  in  everything,  he  was  the  type  of  the  Puritan 
idea  in  its  most  bracing  expression.  .  .  .  His  courage, 
his  honesty,  his  proud,  uncompromising  independence  were 
all  his  own,  but  Puritanism  fostered  them." — Sidney  Low. 

"No  one  of  our  poets  shows  a  richer  or  wider  range  of 
thought  than  Mr.  Lowell ;  no  one  a  greater  variety  of  ex- 
pression in  verse.  But  whatever  form  his  Muse  may  select, 
it  is  the  individuality  of  an  intellect  rather  than  that  of  a  lit- 
erary artist  which  she  represents." — Bayard  Taylor. 

"  Lowell  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  exquisite  prose  writers 
of  the  century,  the  master  of  a  style  which,  while  it  is  flex- 
ible to  all  the  demands  of  statement,  description,  reflection, 
epigram,  and  narrative,  is  strongly  individualized  and  sug- 
gests no  model  on  which  it  is  formed." — E.  P.  Whipple. 


8 14  LOWELL 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  am  not,  I  think,  specially  thin-skinned  as  to  other  people's 
opinions  of  myself,  having,  as  I  conceive,  later  and  fuller  intel- 
ligence on  that  point  than  anybody  else  can  give  me.  .  .  . 
Whoever  at  fifty  does  not  rate  himself  quite  as  low  as  most  of  his 
acquaintance  would  be  likely  to  put  him,  must  be  either  a  fool  or 
a  great  man,  and  I  humbly  disclaim  being  either." — On  a  Certain 
Condescension  in  Foreigners. 

"  It  may  be  coarse,  earthy,  but  in  reading  it  ['  Gammer  Gur- 
ton's  Needle ']  one  feels  that  he  is  at  least  a  man  among  men 
and  not  a  humbug  among  humbugs." — Essay  on  Spenser, 

"  Is  it  not  the  highest  art  of  a  Republic  to  make  men  of  flesh 
and  blood  and  not  the  marble  ideals  of  such  ?  It  may  be  fairly 
doubted  whether  we  have  produced  this  higher  type  of  man  yet. 
Perhaps  it  is  the  collective,  not  the  individual,  humanity  that  is 
to  have  a  chance  of  nobler  development  among  us.  ...  In 
some  places,  we  have  arrived  at  a  point  at  which  civil  society  is 
no  longer  possible,  and  already  another  reaction  has  begun,  not 
backwards  to  the  old  system,  but  toward  fitness  either  from  nat- 
ural aptitude  or  special  training." — On  a  Certain  Condescension 
in  Foreigners. 


3.  Sectionalism — Nationalism. — Quite  as  much  as 
Whittier,  though  in  another  way,  Lowell  proclaims  himself  a 
son  of  New  England  and  of  America.  He  gloried  in  being  an 
American.  It  has  been  justly  said  of  him  that  "  he  did  more 
than  any  other  man  to  command  respect  for  our  institutions  " 
in  the  minds  of  all  Europeans.  During  his  later  years  Low- 
ell was  charged  by  that  class  of  pseudo-statesmen  against 
whom  he  had  directed  some  of  his  keenest  darts  with  being 
un-American.  Never  was  a  more  baseless  slander  uttered.  In  a 
recently  published  letter  addressed  to  his  friend,  Joel  Ben- 
ton,  and  bearing  date  of  January,  1876,  Lowell  indignantly 
exclaims:  "These  fellows  have  no  notion  of  what  love  of 
country  means.  It  is  in  my  very  blood  and  bones.  If  I  am 
not  an  American,  who  ever  was  ?  ml  am  no  pessimist,  nor 


LOWELL  815 

ever  was.  .  .  .  What  fills  me  with  doubt  and  dismay 
is  the  degradation  of  the  moral  tone.  Is  it,  or  is  it  not,  a 
result  of  Democracy?  Is  ours  a  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people,  for  the  people,  or  a  Kakistocracy  rather,  for  the 
benefit  of  knaves  at  the  cost  of  fools  ?  Democracy  is,  after 
all,  nothing  more  than  an  experiment,  like  another  ;  and  I 
know  only  one  way  of  judging  it — by  its  results.  Democracy 
in  itself  is  no  more  sacred  than  monarchy.  It  is  man 
who  is  sacred.  .  .  .  It  is  honor,  justice,  culture  that 
make  liberty  invaluable.  .  .  .  Forgive  me  for  this  long 
letter  of  justification,  which  I  am  willing  to  write  for  your 
friendly  eye,  though  I  should  scorn  to  make  any  pub- 
lic defence.  Let  the  tenor  of  my  life  and  writings  defend 
me." 

"Lowell  was  an  intense  New  Englander.  There  is  no 
finer  figure  of  the  higher  Puritan  type.  The  New  England 
soil,  from  which  he  sprang,  was  precious  to  him.  The  New 
England  legend,  the  New  England  language,  New  England 
character  and  achievement,  were  all  his  delight  and  familiar 
study.  .  .  .  Burns  did  not  give  to  the  Scottish  tongue  a 
nobler  immortality  than  Lowell  gave  to  the  dialect  of  New 
England.  .  .  .  Literature  was  his  pursuit,  but  patriot- 
ism was  his  passion.  His  love  of  country  was  that  of  a  lover 
for  his  mistress." — George  William  Curtis. 

"  His  America  was  a  country  Avorth  hearing  about,  a  mag- 
nificent conception,  an  admirably  consistent  and  lovable 
object  of  allegiance.  If  the  sign  that  in  Europe  one  knew 
him  best  by  was  his  intense  national  consciousness,  one  felt 
that  this  consciousness  could  not  sit  lightly  on  a  man  in 
whom  it  was  the  strongest  form  of  piety.  .  .  .  Above  all, 
it  was  a  particular  allegiance  to  New  England.  .  .  .  New 
England  was  heroic,  for  he  felt  in  his  pulses  the  whole  history 
of  her  origines." — Henry  James. 

"  Lowell  will  chiefly  be  remembered  as  poet  because  of 
his  New  England  heart  and  voice — his  idyls  of  the  Junes  and 


8l6  LOWELL 

Decembers  of  Massachusetts  and  his  verse  of  anti-slavery  and 
patriotism." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  He  is  an  American  of  the  Americans,  alive  to  the  idea 
and  movement  of  the  whole  country,  singularly  independent 
in  his  tests  of  its  men  and  products — from  whatever  section  or 
in  however  unpromising  a  form  they  chance  to  appear.  .  .  . 
He  seems  to  represent  New  England  more  variously  than 
either  of  his  comrades.  We  find  in  his  work,  as  in  theirs,  her 
loyalty  and  moral  purpose.  She  Jias  been  at  cost  for  his 
training,  and  he  in  turn  has  read  her  heart,  honoring  her  as  a 
mother  before  the  world  and  seeing  beauty  in  her  common 
garb  and  speech.  .  .  .  To  him  the  Eastern  States  are 
what  the  fathers,  as  he  has  said,  desired  to  found — no  new 
Jerusalem  but  a  New  England  and,  if  it  might  be,  a  better 
one.  His  poetry  has  the  strength,  the  tenderness,  and  the 
defects  of  the  down-East  temper." — E.  C.  Stedmam. 

"The  elementary  fact  about  Lowell,  which  stands  at  the 
threshold  of  every  discussion  of  his  works,  is  that  he  was  born 
and  bred  a  New  Englander.  It  is  a  fact  which  he  himself 
does  not  permit  his  readers  to  forget.  In  his  prose  and  in  his 
verse  he  goes  back  to  it  again  and  again.  Literature  will 
know  him  longest,  not  as  the  critic  nor  as  the  writer  of  ele- 
gies, lyrics,  and  odes,  but  as  the  poet  who  gave  literary  form 
and  value  to  the  indigenous  humour,  rhetoric,  and  satire  of  the 
farmers  of  New  England." — Sidney  Low. 

"  If  there  was  one  quality  more  than  another  that  summed 
up  Lowell's  characteristics,  it  was  his  Americanism. 
Longfellow   and    Bryant   are   essentially    English,    modified 
slightly  by  their  American  environment." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Above  all,  we  beg  them  to  remember  that  America  is  not  to 
us,  as  to  them,  a  mere  object  of  external  interest  to  be  discussed 
and  analyzed,  but  in  us,  part  of  our  very  marrow.  ...  I  know 
one  person  who  is  singular  enough  to'think  Cambridge  the  very 


LOWELL  817 

best  spot  on  the  habitable  globe.  Doubtless  God  could  have 
made  a  better,  but  doubtless  he  never  did." — On  a  Certain  Con 
descension  in  Foreigners. 

"  America  he  informed  me,  was  without  arts,  science,  litera- 
ture, culture,  or  any  native  hope  of  supplying  them.  We  were 
a  people  wholly  given  to  money-getting  and  who,  having  got  it, 
knew  no  better  use  for  it  than  to  hold  it  fast.  I  am  fain  to  con- 
fess that  I  felt  a  sensible  itching  of  the  biceps,  and  that  my  fin- 
gers closed  with  such  a  grip  as  he  had  just  informed  me  was  one 
of  the  effects  of  our  unhappy  climate.  .  .  .  That  young  man 
will  never  know  how  near  he  came  to  being  assaulted  by  a  re- 
spectable gentleman  of  middle  age  at  the  corner  of  Church  Street. 
.  .  .  Till  after  our  Civil  War  it  never  seemed  to  enter  the 
head  of  any  foreigner,  especially  of  any  Englishman,  that  an 
American  had  what  could  be  called  a  country,  except  as  a  place 
to  eat,  sleep,  and  trade  in.  Then  it  seemed  to  strike  them  sud- 
denly. By  jove,  you  know,  fellows  don't  fight  like  that  for  a  shop- 
till !  No,  I  rather  think  not.  To  Americans,  America  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  promise  and  an  expectation.  .  .  .  There 
was  never  a  colony  save  this  that  went  forth,  not  to  seek  Gold  but 
God.  Is  it  not  as  well  to  have  sprung  from  such  as  these  as  from 
some  burly  beggar  who  came  over  with  Wilhelmus  Conquestor?  " 
—  On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners. 


4.  Appreciation  of  Nature.—"  The  charm  of  Lowell's 
out-door  verse  lies  in  its  spontaneity  ;  he  loves  nature  with  a 
child-like  joy,  her  boon  companion,  finding  even  in  her  illu- 
sions welcome  and  relief — just  as  one  gives  himself  up  to  a 
story  or  a  play,  and  will  not  be  a  doubter.  Here  he  never 
ages,  and  he  beguiles  you  and  me  to  share  his  joy.  It  does 
me  good  to  see  a  poet  who  knows  a  bird  or  a  flower  as  one 
friend  knows  another,  yet  loves  it  for  itself  alone.  .  .  . 
He  has  the  pioneer  heart,  to  whom  a  homestead  farm  is  dear 
and  familiar,  and  native  woods  and  waters  are  an  intoxication. 
.  There  is  little  of  the  ocean  in  his  verse ;  the  sea- 
breeze  brings  fewer  messages  to  him  than  to  Longfellow  and 
Whittier.  His  sense  of  inland  nature  is  all  the  more  alert — 
53 


8l8  LOWELL 

for  him  the  sweet  security  of  meadow  paths  and  orchard  closes. 
What  Lowell  loves  most  in  nature  are  the  trees  and  their 
winged  inhabitants  and  the  flowers  that  grow  untended." — 
E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  He  is  the  poet  who  can  stoop  to  read 
The  secret  hidden  in  a  wayside  weed ; 
Whom  June's  warm  breath  with  child-like  rapture  fills, 
Whose  spirit  '  dances  with  the  daffodils. '  ' ' 

— O.  W.  Holmes. 

"  How  Nature  mourns  thee  in  the  still  retreat 

Where  passed  in  peace  thy  love-enchanted  hours ! 
Where  shall  she  find  an  eye  like  thine  to  greet 

Spring's  earliest  foot-prints  on  her  opening  flowers? 
Have  the  pale  wayside  weeds  no  fond  regret 
For  him  who  read  the  secrets  they  enfold  ? 
Shall  the  proud  spangles  of  the  field  forget 

The  verse  that  lent  new  glory  to  their  gold  ?  " 

—O.  W.  Holmes. 

"In  a  considerable  portion  of  his  nature- verse  he  accepts 
the  Wordsworthian  doctrine,  and  goes  to  the  fields  as  an 
escape  from  books,  lays  thought  down  like  a  burden,  and  plays 
'tis  holiday  with  him  ;  and  in  coming  back  to  the  study, 
seems  to  make  an  unwelcome  return  to  himself.  ...  In 
the  poem  in  which  he  describes  his  day  under  the  willows. 
Mr.  Lowell  reveals  in  most  phases  the  feeling  habitual  to  his 
mind  of  the  sense  of  nature  as  a  refuge,  of  the  strength  of 
associations  with  a  familiar  landscape,  and,  in  a  word,  shows 
the  attribute  of  the  poet  who  is  also  a  man  of  thought  toward 
nature  and  human  nature  met  face  to  face." — G.  E.  Wood- 
berry. 

' '  When  out  for  a  walk  nothing  escaped  him — not  the 
plumage  of  a  bird,  the  leafage  of  a  tree,  the  color  of  a  blossom, 
nor  a  trait  upon  a  human  countenance.  He  knew  almost 


LOWELL  819 

every  bird  by  its  note,  its  color,  and  its  flight.  He  knew 
where  flowers  grew  and  when  they  should  appear.  All  this 
knowledge  might  have  been  possessed  by  a  person  with  little 
sentiment ;  but  it  was  with  the  eyes  of  love  that  Lowell  looked 
upon  the  world." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  There  is  something  of  seasonable  nature  in  every  verse — 
the  freshness  of  the  spirit  sociable  with  earth  and  sky  and 
stream.  .  .  .  What  could  be  more  strangely  sweet  than 
the  little  poem  '  Phoebe  '  in  '  Heartsease  and  Rue  ' — a  remin- 
iscence of  the  saddest  of  all  bird-notes  caught  in  the  dimmest 
of  wakeful  dawns  ?  " — Henry  James. 

"  I  regret  that  I  cannot  dwell  at  greater  length  upon  the 
lighter  tones  of  sweet  feeling  that  come  streaming  in  from  his 
'  Garden  Acquaintance  ' — like  the  song  of  birds  in  spring. 
The  bobolink  and  the  oriole,  the  song-sparrow  and  the  cat- 
bird, besides  the  many  birds  with  which  we  are  familiar  in 
England — are  all  his  friends,  and  he  is  their  protector." — 
H.  R.  Haweis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  If  they  [the  birds]  will  not  come  near  enough  to  me  (as  most 
of  them  will),  I  bring  them  close  with  an  opera  glass, — a  much 
better  weapon  than  a  gun.  I  would  not,  if  I  could,  convert  them 
from  their  pretty  pagan  ways.  The  only  one  I  sometimes  have 
savage  doubts  about  is  the  red  squirrel.  .  .  .  He  steals  the 
corn  from  under  the  noses  of  my  poultry.  But  what  would  you 
have  ?  He  will  come  down  upon  the  limb  of  a  tree  I  am  lying 
under  till  he  is  within  a  yard  of  me.  He  and  his  mate  will. scurry 
up  and  down  the  great  black  walnut  for  my  diversion,  chattering 
like  monkeys.  Can  I  sign  his  death  warrant  who  has  tolerated 
me  about  his  grounds  so  long?  Not  I.  Let  them  steal,  and 
welcome.  I  am  sure  I  should,  had  I  the  same  bringing  up  and 
the  same  temptation.  As  for  the  birds,  I  do  not  believe  there  is 
one  of  them  but  does  more  good  than  harm  ;  and  of  how  many 
featherless  bipeds  can  this  be  said  ? " — My  Garden  Acquaint- 
ance. 


820  LOWELL 

"  So  far  as  he  himself  can  shape  his  course,  it  [Walton's  brook] 
leads  us  under  the  shadow  of  honey-suckle  hedges,  or  along  the 
rushy  banks  of  silence-loving  streams,  or  through  the  cloistral 
hush  of  cathedral1  closes,  or  where  the  shadow  of  the  village 
church-tower  creeps  round  its  dial  of  green  graves  below,  or  to 
the  company  of  godly  and  thoughtful  men." — Essay  on  Walton. 

"The  Pewee  is  the  first  bird  to  pipe  up  in  the  morning;  he 
saddens  with  the  season,  and  as  summer  declines,  he  changes 
his  note  to  che  pewee  !  as  if  in  lamentation.  He  is  so  familiar  as 
often  to  pursue  a  fly  through  the  open  window  into  my  library. 
There  is  something  inexpressibly  dear  to  me  in  these  old  friend- 
ships of  a  lifetime.  There  is  scarce  a  tree  of  mine  but  has  had, 
at  some  time  or  other,  a  happy  homestead  among  its  boughs." 
— My  Garden  Acquaintance. 


5.  High    Moral    Purpose— Religious    Instinct— 

Although  Lowell  often  ridiculed  and  always  rebelled  against 
the  narrow  "  orthodoxy  "  in  the  midst  of  which  he  was  reared, 
his  poems  prove  him  to  be  possessed  of  a  profound  religious 
instinct.  Says  one  critic:  "Hope  and  faith  are  his  heart's 
pillars — hope  for  man,  faith  in  truth,  love,  right.  A  loving 
spirit  flows  from  his  soul  into  his  poetry.  The  woes  and 
wonderings  of  humanity  are  touched  with  exquisite  tender- 
ness. ' ' 

"  Lowell's  voice  was  ever  for  independence,  human  rights, 
the  dignity  of  labor." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  That  justice  and  law  and  righteousness  are  things  for 
which  any  man  with  an  immortal  soul  in  him  would  willingly 
die — these  formed  the  stock  of  axioms  with  which  the  son  of 
the  Massachusetts  minister  started  in  life.  .  .  .  There 
is  hardly  anything  which  Lowell  wrote  that  is  not  calculated 
and  intended  to  awaken  worthy  ambition,  generous  effort, 
and  an  earnest  appreciation  of  purity,  nobility  and  truth, 
whether  in  literature  or  life.  .  .  .  It  is  pleasant  in  his 
last  poems  to  note  how  the  generous  enthusiasm  for  progress, 
the  faith  in  an  ideal,  which  were 'the  legacies  of  his  early 


LOWELL  821 

training,  remained,  through  all  the  bitterness  of  controversy 
and  after  the  militant  scorn  for  the  mean  and  unworthy  had 
died  down  into  a  placid  tolerance." — Sidney  Low. 

"  He  is  the  poet  of  pluck  and  action  and  purpose,  of  the 
gayety  and  liberty  of  virtue.  .  .  .  His  poetical  per- 
formance might  sometimes,  no  doubt,  be  more  intensely 
lyrical,  but  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  could  be  more  intensely 
moral — I  mean,  of  course,  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  term. 
His  play  is  as  good  as  a  game  in  the  open  air  ;  but  when  he 
is  serious,  he  is  as  serious  as  Wordsworth  and  much  more 
compact. " — Henry  James. 

"  Mr.  Lowell  was  a  Puritan  by  heredity,  and  the  moral 
fervor  of  the  men  of  the  Mayflower  was  wrought  into  the 
inmost  fibre  of  his  being.  But  his  Puritanism  was  a  living 
force  applied  to  the  living  issues  of  the  day.  .  .  .  Mr. 
Lowell  has  been,  and  long  will  be,  the  most  potent  preacher 
of  the  living  Christ  that  this  century  has  produced. 
The  real  abiding  power  which  dwelt  in  him  when  he  was 
'  greatly  and  suddenly  inspired '  lies  in  those  poems  where  he 
reveals  the  Christ  still  wandering  among  men,  seeking  to  help 
and  to  save."—  W.  T.  Stead. 

"  Never  did  a  man  trust  himself  more  unreservedly  to  the 
guidance  of  a  blazing  principle — never  did  '  principle  '  bring 
a  man  through  more  triumphantly.  .  .  .  The  deep  re- 
ligious instinct,  emancipated  from  all  forms,  but  vibrating 
with  the  fitful  uncertainty  of  an  aeolian  harp  to  'the  wind 
which  bloweth  where  it  listeth,'  this  is  the  first  thing  in 
Lowell's  mind,  as  it  is  the  second  in  Longfellow's  and  the 
third  in  Bryant's."— H.  R.  Haweis. 

"At  the  root  of  this  personality  lay  a  deep  moral  earnest- 
ness. Mr.  Lowell  was  of  Puritan  descent ;  and  though  the 
training  of  three  generations  had  refined  all  Puritan  acerbity 
and  narrowness  out  of  him,  yet  the  aggressive  moral  temper 
of  the  Puritan  was  still  in  his  blood.  .  .  .  His  own  ideals 
were  rather  moral  than  merely  literary ;  and  all  his  best  writ- 


822  LOWELL 

ing,  in  poetry,  at  all  events,  has  a  distinct  ethical  motive." 
— C.  T.   Winchester. 

"  The  obvious  characteristic  of  the  poems  is  their  high  re- 
ligious spirit.  It  is  not  a  mild  and  passive  morality  that  we 
perceive,  but  the  aggressive  force  of  primitive  Christianity. 
.  Though  the  physical  aspect  of  evolution  had  en- 
gaged his  attention,  as  it  has  that  of  all  intellectual  men,  and 
had  commanded  perhaps  a  startled  and  dubious  assent,  yet  his 
strong  spiritual  nature  recoiled  in  horror  from  the  materialistic 
application  of  the  doctrine  to  the  origin  of  things.  Force 
could  never  be  to  him  the  equivalent  of  spirit,  nor  law  the 
substitute  of  God.  In  conversation  once  upon  the  '  promise 
and  potency  '  phrases  of  Tyndall,  he  exclaimed  with  energy, 
'  Let  whoever  will  believe  that  the  idea  of  Hamlet  or  Lear 
was  developed  from  a  clod ;  I  will  not.'  " — F.  H.  Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Traditions?  Granting  that  we  did  not  have  any,  all  that  is 
worth  having  in  them  is  the  common  property  of  the  soul — an 
estate  in  gavel-kind  for  all  the  sons  of  Adam — and,  moreover,  if 
a  man  cannot  stand  on  his  two  feet,  were  it  not  better  for  him  to 
be  honest  about  it  at  once  and  go  down  on  all-fours  ?  " — On  a  Cer- 
tain Condescension  in  Foreigners, 

"  During  the  great  storm  of  two  winters  ago,  the  most  robus- 
tious periwig-pated  fellow  of  late  years,  I  waded  and  floundered 
a  couple  of  miles  through  the  whispering  night,  and  brought  home 
that  feeling  of  expansion  we  have  after  being  in  good  company. 
1  Great  things  doeth  He  which  we  cannot  comprehend  :  for  He 
saith  to  the  snow,  Be  thou  on  the  earth.'  .  .  .  There  is 
nothing  in  the  original  of  that  fair  snow's  tender  flakes,  but 
neither  Pope  nor  Cowper  could  get  out  of  their  heads  the  Psalm- 
ist's tender  phrase  :  '  He  giveth  his  snow  like  wool ! '  " — A  Good 
Word  for  Winter. 

"  I  am  something  of  a  protestant  in  matters  of  government 
also,  and  am  willing  to  get  rid  of  vestments  and  ceremonies  and 
to  come  down  to  bare  benches  if  only  faith  in  God  take  the  place 
of  a  general  agreement  to  profess  confidence  in  ritual  and  sham. 


LOWELL  823 

/ 

Every  mortal  man  of  us  holds  stock  in  the  only  public  debt  that 
is  absolutely  sure  of  payment,  and  that  is  the  debt  of  the  Maker 
of  this  universe  to  the  universe  He  has  made.  I  have  no  notion 
of  selling  out  my  shares  in  a  panic."  — On  a  Certain  Condescen- 
sion in  Foreigners. 

6.  Humor.— Brilliant  Satire.— "Here  [in  < The Biglow 
Papers ']  was  now  seen  that  maturity  of  genius,  of  which 
Humor  is  a  flower,  revealing  the  sound,  kind  man  within  the 
poet.  .  .  .  The  jesting  is  far  removed  from  that  clownish 
gabble  which,  if  it  still  increases,  will  shortly  add  another  to 
the  list  of  offences  that  make  killing  no  murder." — E.  C. 
Stedman. 

"  No  speech,  no  plea,  no  appeal  was  comparable  in  popular 
and  permanent  effect  with  this  pitiless  tempest  of  fire  and 
hail  ['  The  Biglow  Papers '],  in  the  form  of  wit,  argument, 
satire,  knowledge,  insight,  learning,  common-sense,  and  pa- 
triotism. It  was  humor  of  the  purest  strain,  but  humor  in 
deadly  earnest.  In  its  course,  as  in  that  of  a  cyclone,  it 
swept  all  before  it — the  press,  the  Church,  criticism,  scholar- 
ship— and  it  bore  resistlessly  down  upon  the  Mexican  War, 
the  pleas  for  slavery,  the  Congressional  debates." — George 
William  Curtis. 

"  While  it  is  just  open  to  argument  whether  Mr.  Lowell  is 
an  actual  or  an  adopted  son  of  the  Muses,  he  is  unquestion- 
ably a  born  humorist.  He  possesses  a  humour  of  thought 
which  is  at  once  broad  and  subtle  ;  his  humour  of  expression 
is  his  American  birthright." — H.  D.  Traill. 

' '  We  have  before  referred  to  the  peculiar  dualism  of  Low- 
ell's mind  ;  a  strong  current  of  reason  running  parallel  with 
a  creative  imagination.  We  might  think  one  of  his  ink-stands 
filled  by  the  spirit  of  Fun  while  the  other  was  under  the  care 
of  the  sedatest  of  the  Muses." — F.  H.  Underwood. 


821  LOWELL 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  is  something  touching  in  the  constancy  with  which 
men  attend  free  lectures  and  in  the  honest  patience  with  which 
they  listen  to  them.  He  who  pays  may  yawn  or  shift  testily  in 
his  seat,  or  even  go  out  with  an  awful  reverberation  of  criticism, 
for  he  has  bought  the  right  to  do  any  or  all  of  these  and  paid 
for  it.  But  gratuitous  hearers  are  anaesthetized  to  suffering  by  a 
sense  of  virtue." — A  Good  Word  for  Winter. 

"Just  so  many  misdirected  letters"  every  year  and  no  more! 
Would  it  were  as  easy  to  reckon  up  the  number  of  men  on 
whose  backs  fate  has  written  the  wrong  address,  so  that  they 
arrive  by  mistake  in  congress  and  other  places  where  they  do  not 
belong  !  May  not  these  wanderers  of  whom  I  speak  have  been 
sent  into  the  world  without  any  proper  address  at  all  ?  Where 
is  our  dead-letter  office  for  such  ?  And  if  wiser  social  arrange- 
ments should  furnish  us  with  something  of  the  sort,  fancy  (hor- 
rible thought  !)  how  many  a  workingman's  friend  (a  kind  of  in- 
dustry in  which  the  labor  is  light  and  the  wages  heavy)  would  be 
sent  thither  because  not  called  for  in  the  office  where  at  present 
he  lies." — On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners. 

"Even  poor  old  Dennis  himself  had  arrived  at  a  kind  of 
muddled  notion  that  artifice  was  not  precisely  art,  that  there 
were  depths  in  human  nature  which  the  most  perfectly  manu- 
factured line  of  five  feet  could  not  sound." — Essay  on  Pope. 

"  The  air,  after  all,  is  only  an  infinitely  thinner  kind  of  water, 
such  as  I  suppose  we  shall  have  to  drink  when  the  state  does  her 
whole  duty  as  a  moral  reformer." — A  Good  Word  for  Winter. 

7.  Wit. — "  Wit  was  as  natural  to  him  as  breathing,  and 
when  the  mood  was  on  he  could  no  more  avoid  seeing  and 
signalling  puns  than  an  inebriate  could  help  seeing  double. 
But  the  wit  and  the  puns  were  not  the  end  and  aim  of  his 
talk.  .  .  •  .  Viewing  Lowell  as  a  poet,  his  mind  seems  to 
have  two  independent  functions  :  in  serious  verse  he  might 
be  weighty,  incisive,  imaginative,  or  tender ;  but  when  he  is 
Hosea  he  revels  in  ludicrous  images,  droll  conceits,  and  quaint 


LOWELL  825 

terms  of  expression.     In  his  serious  moments  a  poetical  image, 
as  in  Wordsworth's  line: 

'  Floats  double,  swan  and  shadow ;  ' 

while  in  the  humorous  half  of  his  existence  the  vision  of  the 
stately  swan  above  is  attended  by  the  shadow  of  a  mirth-pro- 
voking gander  below.  The  reflection  is  a  jocose  similitude — 
not  a  disenchanting  parody  of  sentiment,  but  a  comic  twist  of 
it — giving  the  lively  shock  of  the  unexpected,  which  is  wit. 
.  It  must  be  repeated  by  way  of  emphasis,  that  from 
the  first  fly-leaf  to  the  colophon,  this  ['The  Biglow  Papers']  is 
the  only  complete  and  perfect  piece  of  grotesque  comedy  in 
existence.  .  .  .  It  ['A  Fable  for  Critics']  is  the  wittiest 
of  literary  satires  and  the  most  faithful  of  caricatures.  .  .  . 
It  is  the  gay  humor  of  a  youth  in  the  freedom  of  an  anony- 
mous pasquinade — revelling  in  puns,  clashing  unexpected  and 
all  but  impossible  rhymes  like  cymbals,  tossing  off  grotesque 
epithets  and  comparisons,  and  going  at  a  break-neck  canter, 
like  a  race-horse  let  loose.  .  .  .  No  other  poem  of  the 
kind  equals  it  in  the  two  aspects  of  vivid  genius  and  riotous 
fun.  .  .  .  It  is  as  full  of  puns  as  a  pudding  of  plums. 
The  good  ones  are  the  best  of  their  kind,  strung  together  like 
beads,  and  the  bad  ones  are  so  '  atrocious  '  as  to  be  quite  as 
amusing." — F.  H.  Underwood, 

"  There  is  no  historic  circle  of  wits  and  scholars  to  which 
Lowell's  abundance  would  not  have  contributed  a  golden  drop 
and  his  wit  a  glittering  repartee.  .  .  .  It  is  so  finely 
compact  of  illustration,  of  thought  and  learning,  of  wit  and 
fancy  and  permeating  humor,  that  his  prose  page  sparkles  and 
sways  like  a  phosphorescent  sea." — George  William  Curtis. 

"  James  Russell  Lowell  is  a  wit  and  a  genius  ;  wit  sparkles 
through  whole  essays  and  long  poems,  and  in  the  best  part  of 
'  A  Fable  for  Critics  '  or  '  The  Biglow  Papers  '  it  fairly  proves 
that  it  is  genius." — C.  F.  Richardson. 


826  LOWELL 

"  Mr.  Lowell's  wit  is  as  omnipresent  and  as  tireless  as  elec- 
tricity itself.  He  himself  says  of  Carlyle  that  he  saw  history 
by  flashes  of  lightning.  It  would  be  equally  true  to  say  of 
Mr.  Lowell  that  he  reads  literature  by  flashes  of  wit.  The 
effect  is  quite  indescribable.  A  quivering  phosphorescent 
sheen  plays  everywhere  over  the  pages  and  sets  them  in  a 
tremulous  illumination  that  never  permits  the  attention  of  the 
reader  to  sleep.  .  .  .  No  other  equal  amount  of  literature 
can  be  produced  that  will  yield  to  a  competent  assay  a  larger 
net  result  of  pure  wit. " — W.  C.  Wilkinson. 

"  Nature  to  the  poet's  power  bestowed, 
A  genial  humor  and  a  trenchant  wit, 
That  now  like  mild  heat-lightning  gleamed  and  glowed, 
Now  with  a  sudden  flash  life's  centre  hit." 

—  W.  W.  Story. 

"Fortunately  for  him  and  for  his  friends  he  was  one  of 
the  most  whimsical,  one  of  the  wittiest  of  human  beings." — 
Henry  James. 

"  He  paints  at  one  time  with  a  dab  of  color,  at  another  he 
etches  elaborately — but  always  with  the  same  firmness  and 
certainty  of  touch  and  always  equally  deliberate — there  is 
nothing  of  the  greased  lightning  about  his  wit :  it  never  plays 
about  his  subject,  it  always  riddles  it  through  and  through." 
— H.  R.  Haweis. 

"  Not  halting  statesmen  and  not  dons  outdone, 
Taught  us  to  love  this  lord  of  sense  and  fun ; 
Nor  did  it  come  to  us  as  a  surprise 
To  find  a  Yankee  virtuous  as  wise. 

No,  Holmes,  sweet  Holmes  !     Our  pride  it  nothing  shames 
To  own  us  conquered  by  your  truthful  James, 
His  '  sword  and  spear  '  in  truth  were  cause  of  it, 
The  sword  of  eloquence,  the  spear  of  wit. ' ' 

— E.  E.  Br0wn  in  London  Punch. 


LOWELL  827 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Everybody  had  a  mission  (with  a  capital  M)  to  attend  to 
everybody  else's  business.  .  .  .  Not  a  few  impecunious  zeal- 
ots abjured  the  use  of  money  (unless  earned  by  other  people), 
professing  to  live  on  the  internal  revenues  of  the  spirit.  Some 
had  assurance  of  instant  millennium  so  soon  as  hooks  and  eyes 
should  be  substituted  for  buttons.  Communities  were  estab- 
lished where  everything  was  to  be  common  but  common-sense. 
.  .  .  All  stood  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  reform  every- 
thing but  themselves." — Essay  on  Thoreau. 

"The  finback  whale  recorded  above  has  much  the  look  of  a 
brown  paper  parcel — the  whitish  stripes  that  run  across  him 
answering  for  the  pack-thread.  He  has  a  kind  of  accidental 
hole  in  the  top  of  his  head,  through  which  he  pooh-poohs  the  rest 
of  creation,  and  which  looks  as  if  it  had  been  made  by  the  chance 
thrust  of  a  chestnut  rail." — Leaves  from  My  Journal. 

11  We  have  the  documents  in  fac-simile,  signed  and  sealed  by 
Lucifer,  Beelzebub,  Satan,  Elimi,  Leviathan,  and  Astaroth,  duly 
witnessed  by  Baalberith,  Sec'y  of  the  Grand  Council  of  Demons. 
Fancy  the  competition  such  a  state  paper  would  arouse  at  a  sale 
of  autographs.  Commonly  no  security  seems  to  have  been  given 
by  the  other  party  to  these  arrangements  but  the  bare  word  of 
the  Devil,  which  was  considered,  no  doubt,  every  whit  as  good 
as  his  bond.'1 — Essay  on  Witchcraft. 

11  Well  do  I  recall  the  sorrows  of  my  youth,  when  I  was  shipped 
in  search  of  knowledge  on  the  long  Johnsonian  swell  of  the  last 
century,  favorable  to  anything  but  the  calm  digestion  of  historic 
truth.  I  had  even  then  an  uneasy  suspicion,  which  was  ripened 
into  certainty,  that  thoughts  were  never  draped  in  long  skirts 
like  babies  if  they  were  strong  enough  to  go  alone." — Essay  on 
Milton. 

8.  Didacticism. — In  his  "  Fable  for  Critics,"  Lowell 
says  justly  of  himself: 

"There's  Lowell,  who's  striving  Parnassus  to  climb 
With  a  whole  bale  of  isms  tied  together  with  rhyme ; 


828  LOWELL 

The  top  of  the  hill  he  will  ne'er  come  nigh  reaching 

Till  he  learns  the  distinction  'twixt  singing  and  preaching ." 

"  The  primary  quality  of  Lowell's  intellect,  so  far  as  one  is 
able  to  understand  it  from  an  examination  of  his  literary 
work  as  a  whole,  was  not  so  much  that  of  the  poet  or  the 
critic  or  the  essayist  as  the  preacher.  This  was  his  voca- 
tion— the  task  for  which  he  had  a  '  call ; '  and  he  felt  it  so 
himself,  and  knew,  as  men  do  in  such  cases,  that  it  was  at 
once  the  source  of  his  weakness  and  his  strength.  .  .  . 
It  is  perfectly  true  that  Lowell's  ascent  of  the  Parnassian 
steep  was  somewhat  seriously  impeded  by  the  Republicanism, 
Neo-Calvinism,  Old  Liberalism,  Humanitarianism,  Melior- 
ism, and  the  rest  of  the  formidable  spiritual  baggage  which 
he  had  to  haul  behind  him.  .  .  .  The  preacher  in  him, 
during  at  least  the  earlier  and  more  characteristic  period  of 
his  work,  was  more  than  the  scholar,  more  than  the  critic  or 
the  poet.  .  .  .  Much  of  Lowell's  teaching  is  like  Car- 
lyle's,  a  discourse  on  the  text — '  Work  while  you  have  the 
light.'  " — Sidney  L(nv. 

"  The  work  of  public  instruction  is  not  so  manifest  nor  so 
much  needed  in  Lowell's  critical  writings,  but  the  result  is 
still  that  sought  by  the  literary  teacher,  and  Lowell's  methods 
are  consciously  didactic,  though  not  always  apparently  so." 
— C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  Lowell's  '  progressive'  verse  often  was  fuller  of  opinion 
than  beauty,  of  eloquence  than  passion.  .  .  .  When 
called  upon,  as  he  supposed,  to  make  a  choice  between  Taste 
and  his  conception  of  Duty,  Taste  sometimes  went  to  the 
wall.  .  .  .  The  thought,  the  purpose — these  are  the  main 
ends  with  Lowell,  though  prose  or  metre  suffer  for  it.  ... 
His  doctrines  and  reflections,  in  the  midst  of  an  ethereal  dis- 
tillation, at  times  act  like  the  single  drop  of  prose  which,  as 
he  reports  a  saying  of  Landor  to  Wordsworth,  precipitates  the 
whole.  ...  If  Whittier  and  Lowell,  like  the  Lake 


LOWELL  829 

Poets  before  them,  became  didactic  through  moral  earnest- 
ness, it  none  the  less  aided  to  inspire  them.  Their  verse  ad- 
vanced a  great  cause  and,  as  the  years  went  by,  grew  in  qual- 
ity— perhaps  as  surely  as  that  of  poets  who,  in  youth,  reject 
all  but  artistic  considerations." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"Song,  satire,  and  parable — more  and  more  as  he  lives 
and  ponders  and  pours  forth — are  all  so  many  pulpit  illustra- 
tions or  platform  pleas." — H.  R.  Haweis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"There  are  certain  defects  of  taste  which  correct  themselves 
by  their  own  extravagance.  Language,  I  suspect,  is  more  apt  to 
be  reformed  by  the  charm  of  some  master  of  it,  like  Milton,  than 
by  any  amount  of  precept.  The  influence  of  second-rate  writers 
for  evil  is  at  best  ephemeral ;  for  true  style,  the  joint  result  of 
culture  and  natural  aptitude,  is  always  in  fashion,  as  fine  manners 
always  are,  in  whatever  clothes." — Essay  on  Pope, 

11  But  a  classic  is  properly  a  book  which  maintains  itself  by  virt- 
ue of  that  happy  coalescence  of  matter  and  style,  that  innate  and 
exquisite  sympathy  between  the  thought  that  gives  life  and  the 
form  that  consents  to  every  mood  of  grace  and  dignity,  which  can 
be  simple  without  being  vulgar,  elevated  without  being  distant, 
and  which  is  something  neither  ancient  nor  modern,  always  new, 
and  incapable  of  growing  old." — Essay  on  Spenser. 

"  The  poet  with  a  real  eye  in  his  head  does  not  give  us  every- 
thing but  only  the  best  ot  everything.  He  selects,  he  combines, 
or  else  gives  what  is  characteristic  only  ;  while  the  false  style  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking  seems  to  be  as  glad  to  get  a  pack  of 
impertinences  on  its  shoulders  as  Christian  in  the  '  Pilgrim's 
Progress  '  was  to  be  rid  of  his.  One  strong  verse  that  can  hold 
itself  upright  with  the  bare  help  of  the  substantive  and  verb  is 
worth  acres  of  this  dead  cord -wood  piled  stick  on  stick,  a  bound- 
less continuity  of  dryness." — Essay  on  Spenser. 

9.  Philanthropy  —  Faith    in    Human    Nature. — 

"  With  all  the  faith  he  had  in  his  own  people  of  the  past,  he 
looked  forward  to  the  new  race  which  is  yet  forming  in  our 


830  LOWELL 

womb,  and  nowhere  in  our  literature  is  there  more  direct 
expression  of  the  national  faith  in  mere  manhood  than  in  a  few 
great  lines  of  these  patriotic  poems,  or,  more  soberly  and  ex- 
plicitly, in  the  essay  upon  Democracy." — G.  E.  Woodberry. 

"  There  was  another  phase  of  Lowell's  teaching  which  was 
not  less  helpful,  and  that  was  his  inexhaustible  faith  in  the  in- 
extinguishable '  spark  of  God  '  in  the  human  heart.     .     . 
He  ever  sees 

'  Beneath  the  foulest  faces  lurking 
One  God-built  shrine  of  reverence  and  love.'  " 

—  W.  T.  Stead. 

"  Man  is  the  great  object  of  Lowell's  song,  because  the 
world  must  be  advanced  to  attain  the  full  stature  of  greatness. 
.     .      His   ethical  code  is  healthful  and  refreshing;  he 
analyses  human  nature  with  all  the  magical    power,  if  also 
with    the   tenderness,    of  the   skilfullest   of  soul-physicians. 
He   is   the   best   of  metaphysicians,    because   his 
conclusions   are  based,  not  upon  theory,  but  upon  the  heart- 
throbs of  that  humanity  whose  soul  he  endeavors  to  pierce." 
—G.  B.  Smith. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  At  first  sight  nothing  seemed  more  drolly  trivial  than  the 
lives  of  those  whose  single  achievement  is  to  record  the  wind  and 
the  temperature  three  times  a  day.  Yet  such  men  are  doubt- 
less sent  into  the  world  for  this  special  end,  and  perhaps  there 
is  no  kind  of  accurate  observation,  whatever  its  object,  that 
has  not  its  final  use  and  value  for  some  one  or  other. 
I  protect  my  game  as  jealously  as  an  English  squire.  If  anybody 
had  oologized  a  certain  cuckoo's  nest  I  know  of  (I  have  a  pair  in 
my  garden  every  year)  it  would  have  left  me  a  sore  place  in  my 
mind  for  weeks.  I  love  to  bring  these  aborigines  back  to  the 
mansuetude  they  showed  to  the  early  voyagers  and  before  they 
had  grown  accustomed  to  man  and  knew  his  savage  ways." — My 
Garden  Acquaintance. 

"  Dryden,  like  Lessing,  was  a  hack-writer,  and  was  proud,  as 


LOWELL  831 

an  honest  man  has  a  right  to  be,  of  being  able  to  get  his  bread 
by  his  brains.  He  lived  in  Gent  Street  all  his  life  and  never 
dreamed  that  where  a  man  of  genius  lived  was  not  the  best  part 
of  town." — Essay  on  Dry  den. 

10.  Rare  but  Deep  Pathos. — "  While  this  quality 
appears  most  frequently  in  Lowell's  poetry,  the  sombre  patches 
in  his  prose  are  as  fine  as  they  are  rare.  The  deep  pathos  in 
some  of  Mr.  Lowell's  poems  is  as  striking  as  any  of  his  other 
qualities.  ...  It  may  be  a  bold  thing  to  says  but  it  seems 
to  us  that  the  pathetic  and  unadorned  simplicity  of  this  poem 
['  The  Changeling ']  has  never  been  surpassed  by  any  English 
writer."— £.  B.  Smith. 

"  If  the  test  of  poetry  be  in  its  power  over  hearts,  the  truth 
is  this  series  ['  The  Biglow  Papers']  must  be  placed  in  the 
highest  rank.  The  beginning  is  quaint,  simple,  and  even  hu- 
morous, but  with  a  subdued  tone;  there  is  no  intimation  of 
the  coming  pathos ;  nor  are  we  conscious  of  the  slow  steps 
by  which  we  are  led,  stanza  by  stanza,  to  the  heights  where 
thought  and  feeling  become  one.  .  .  .  Lowell  had  lost 
three  nephews  and  other  near  relatives  in  the  war,  and  his  ref- 
erences to  them  can  hardly  be  read  without  tears.  There  is  a 
cry  of  pain  in  every  line.  .  .  .  They  are  palpitant  like 
naked  nerves,  and  every  word  is  like  the  leaf  plucked  by 
Dante,  which  trickled  blood." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  There  were  qualities  in  this  second  book  [of  his  poetry] 
which  revealed  an  active  and  fertile  mind,  a  quick  sympathy 
with  and  a  clear  comprehension  of  sorrow  and  suffering." — 
J?.  H.  Stoddard. 

"  To  our  mind,  some  of  the  simpler  verses  are  the  heart- 
poetry  of  Lowell's  home — are  the  most  pathetic,  and  conse- 
quently the  most  poetical." — W.  W.  Story. 


832  LOWELL 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  How  well  I  remember  the  indomitable  good-humor  under  fire 
of  him  who  fell  in  the  front  of  Ball's  Bluff,  the  silent  pertinacity 
of  the  gentle  scholar  who  got  his  last  hurt  at  Fair  Oaks,  the  ardor 
in  the  gallant  charge  of  the  gentleman  who,  with  the  death-wound 
in  his  side,  headed  his  brigade  at  Cedar  Creek  !  How  it  comes 
back,  and  they  never  come  !  " — A  Good  Word  for  Winter. 

"  The  war  was  ended.  I  might  walk  townward  without  that 
aching  dread  of  bulletins  that  had  darkened  the  July  sunshine 
and  twice  made  the  scarlet  leaves  of  October  seem  stained  with 
blood.  I  remembered  with  a  pang,  half  proud,  half  painful,  how, 
so  many  years  ago,  I  had  walked  over  the  same  path  and  felt 
round  my  finger  the  soft  pressure  of  a  little  hand  that  was  one 
day  to  harden  with  faithful  grip  of  sabre.  On  how  many  paths, 
leading  to  how  many  homes  where  proud  memory  does  all  she 
can  to  fill  up  the  fireside  gaps  with  shining  shapes,  must  not  men 
be  walking  in  just  such  pensive  mood  as  I  ?  Ah,  young  heroes, 
safe  in  immortal  youth  as  those  of  Homer,  you,  at  least,  carried 
your  ideal  hence  untarnished  !  It  is  locked  for  you  beyond  moth 
or  rust  in  the  treasure-chamber  of  death." — On  a  Certain  Con- 
descension in  Foreigners. 

"  I  love  old  ways,  and  the  path  I  was  walking  felt  kindly  to  the 
feet  it  had  known  for  almost  fifty  years.  How  many  fleeting  im- 
pressions it  had  shared  with  me  !  How  many  times  I  had  lingered 
to  study  the  shadows  of  the  leaves  mezzotinted  upon  the  turf  that 
edged  it  by  the  moon,  of  the  bare  boughs  etched  with  a  touch 
beyond  Rembrandt  by  the  same  unconscious  artist  on  the  smooth 
page  of  snow." — On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners. 

xi.  Exuberant  Imagery. — "Even  in  his  poems  of  the 
heart,  Lowell's  poetic  fancy  made  him  too  lavish  in  illustra- 
tion and  epithet.  A  discreeter  bard  would  have  restricted  his 
figurative  language  and  won  greater  fame." — C.  F.  Richard- 
son. 

"  In  a  single  page,  Lowell  compares  Chaucer's  style  to  a 
river  and  a  precious  vintage,  and  contrasts  it  with  the  froth 
of  champagne  and  the  folly  of  Miie.  In  relation  to  Shake- 


LOWELL  833 

speare's  birth,  we  have  astrology,  vinous  processes,  and  alembic 
projection,  following  upon  one  another  as  illustrations  of  the 
coming  nativity.  .  .  .  Nor  have  we  any  writer  whose 
imagery  is  oftener  strong  and  exquisite  :  as  in  the  description 
of  a  snowy  winter  landscape." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Lowell's  prose  writings  are  as  remarkable  as  his  poetry. 
The  copiousness  of  his  illustrations,  the  richness  of  his  ima- 
gery, the  easy  flow  of  his  sentences,  the  keenness  of  his  wit, 
give  to  his  reviews  and  essays  a  fascinating  charm  that  would 
place  him  in  the  front  rank  of  our  prose  writers,  if  he  did 
not  occupy  a  similar  position  among  our  poets." — George 
William  Curtis. 

"Nothing  in  his  first  volume,  'A  Year's  Life,'  suggests 
the  throng  of  subtle  thoughts  and  images  which  almost  con- 
fuse us  by  their  multiplicity  in  'The  Cathedral.'  " — E.  P. 
Whipple. 

"  His  ideality  and  plastic  faculty  gave  to  the  train  of 
weighty  thought  the  graces  of  image  and  simile ;  and  at  length 
the  sonorous  sentences  seemed  moving  to  the  sound  of  music, 
like  a  well-ordered  army,  glittering  in  sunlight." — F.  H. 
Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Night  has  no  silence  like  this  of  busy  day.  All  the  batteries 
of  noise  are  spiked.  We  see  the  movement  of  life  as  a  deaf  man 
sees  it,  a  mere  wraith  of  the  clamorous  existence  that  inflicts  it- 
self on  our  ears  when  the  ground  is  bare.  The  earth  is  clothed 
in  innocence  as  a  garment.  Every  wound  of  the  landscape  is 
healed  ;  whatever  was  stiff  has  been  sweetly  rounded  as  the 
breasts  of  Aphrodite  ;  what  was  unsightly  has  been  covered 
gently  with  a  soft  splendor,  as  if,  Cowley  would  have  said,  nature 
had  cleverly  let  fall  her  handkerchief  to  hide  it." — A  Good 
Word  for  Winter. 

''  The  most  beautiful  thing  I  have  seen  at  sea,  all  the  more  so 

that  I  had  never  heard  of  it,  is  the  trail  of  a  shoal  of  fish  through 

the  phosphorescent  water.     It  is  like  a  flight  of  silver  rockets  or 

the  streaming  of  northern  lights  through  that  silent  nether  heaven. 

53 


834  LOWELL 

I  thought  nothing  could  go  beyond  that  rustling  star-foam  which 
was  churned  up  by  our  ship's  bows  or  those  eddies  and  disks  of 
dreamy  flame  that  rose  and  wandered  out  of  sight  behind  us." — 
Leaves  from  My  Journal  at  Sea, 

"  Dryden,  by  his  powerful  example,  by  the  charm  of  his  verse, 
which  combines  vigor  and  fluency  in  a  measure  perhaps  never 
reached  by  any  other  of  our  poets,  and  above  all  because  it  is 
never  long  before  the  sunshine  of  his  cheerful  good  sense  breaks 
through  the  clouds  of  rhetoric  and  gilds  the  clipped  hedges  over 
which  his  thought  clambers  like  an  unpruned  vine,  did  more 
than  all  others  combined  to  bring  about  the  triumphs  of  French 
standards  in  taste  and  French  principles  in  criticism." — Essay 
on  Pope. 

12.  Colloquial  Rase. — "  Biglow,  like  Burns,  makes 
the  dialect  he  employs  flexible  to  every  mood  of  thought  and 
passion,  from  good  sense  as  solid  as  granite  to  the  most  be- 
witching descriptions  of  nature  and  the  loftiest  affirmations  of 
conscience." — E.  P.  Whipple. 

"  He  carried  style  absolutely  into  conversation,  where  in- 
deed it  freely  disguised  itself  as  intensely  colloquial  wit." — 
Henry  James. 

"  It  is  with  some  apprehension  that  the  present  writer  vent- 
ures to  quote  a  stanza  in  the  native  dialect ;  though  full  of 
delicate  feeling,  expressed  with  the  inimitable  art  of  a  great 
poet,  the  unlettered  style  suggests  only  what  is  ridiculous  '  to 
the  general,'  who  can  see  nothing  touching  in  the  sentiment 
of  a  rustic,  and  are  not  softened  by  tears  unless  shed  into  a 
broidered  handkerchief." — F.  H.  Underwood. 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Suppose  we  grant  that  winter  is  the  sleep  of  the  year — what 
then  ?  I  take  it  upon  me  to  say  that  his  dreams  are  finer  than 
the  best  reality  of  his  waking  rivals.  .  .  .  For  my  own  part, 
I  think  winter  a  pretty  wide-awake  old  boy,  and  his  bluff 
sincerity  and  hearty  ways  are  more  congenial  to  my  mood  and 


LOWELL  835 

more  wholesome  for  me  than  any  charms  of  which  his  rivals  are 
capable." — A  Good  Word  for  Winter. 

"  We  cannot  have  fine  buildings  till  we  are  less  in  a  hurry. 
We  snatch  our  education  like  a  meal  at  a  railway  station,  just 
in  time  to  make  us  dyspeptic.  The  whistle  shrieks,  and  we  must 
rush  or  lose  our  places  in  the  great  train  of  life.  .  .  .  Our 
very  villages  seem  in  motion,  following  westward  the  bewitching 
music  of  some  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin.  We  still  feel  the  great 
push  toward  sundown  given  to  the  peoples  somewhere  in  the 
gray  dawn  of  history.  The  cliff-swallow  alone  of  all  animate 
nature  emigrates  eastward." — A  Moose  head  Journal. 

"  Were  you  ever  alone  with  the  sun  ?  You  think  it  a  very 
simple  question  ;  but  I  never  was,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word, 
till  I  was  held  up  to  him  one  cloudless  day  on  the  broad  buckler 
of  the  ocean.  I  suppose  one  might  have  the  same  feeling  in  the 
desert.  I  remember  getting  something  like  it  years  ago  when  I 
climbed  alone  to  the  top  of  a  mountain,  and  lay  face  up  on  the 
hot  gray  moss,  striving  to  get  a  notion  of  how  an  Arab  might 
feel." — At  Sea. 

"  I  confess  that  I  come  to  the  treatment  of  Pope  with  diffi- 
dence. I  was  brought  up  in  the  old  superstition  that  he  was  the 
greatest  poet  that  ever  lived,  and  when  I  came  to  find  out  that  I 
had  instincts  of  my  own  and  my  mind  was  brought  in  contact 
with  the  apostles  of  a  more  esoteric  doctrine  of  poetry,  I  felt  an 
ardent  desire  for  smashing  the  idols  I  had  been  brought  up  to 
worship." — Essay  on  Pope. 


13.  Homeliness.  —  "It  ['  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal '] 
was  woven  of  the  homeliest,  the  most  ungainly  material. "- 
E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  Even  his  lectures  on  subjects  comparatively  dry  and  dull 
were  brightened  by  the  ceaseless  flow  of  humor, 
which  was  often  homely  but  never  coarse.  Indeed,  no  man 
drew  more  careful  distinctions  between  what  was  homely  and 
what  was  vulgar  than  the  praised  and  abused  author  of  '  The 
Biglow  Papers.'  .  .  .  The  homeliness,  or  vulgarity, 
which  the  writer  ingeniously  defends,  gave  them  ['  The  Big- 


836  LOWELL 

low  Papers  ']  half  their  charm  with  the  half-educated  masses." 
—  W.   IV.  Story. 

"  They  [the  speakers  in  'The  Biglow  Papers']  expressed 
their  opinions  upon  topics  in  which  they  could  not  but  be  inter- 
ested and  in  words  which  were  habitual  with  them — in  their 
simple,  honest,  homely,  down  right,  every  -  dayspeech." — 
R.  H.  Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

« 

"  It  has  a  good  chance  of  being  pretty  ;  but,  like  most  Amer- 
ican towns,  it  is  in  a  hobble-de-hoy  age,  growing  yet ;  one  can- 
not tell  what  may  happen.  A  child  of  great  promise  of  beauty 
is  often  spoiled  by  its  second  teeth.  .  .  .  There  is  something 
pokerish  about  a  deserted  dwelling  even  in  daylight." — A  Moose- 
head  Journal. 

' '  The  only  event  of  the  journey  hither  was  a  boy  hawking  ex- 
hilaratingly  the  last  great  railroad  smash.  .  .  .  Other  details 
of  my  dreadful  ride  I  will  spare  you.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  I  ar- 
rived here  in  safety,  in  complexion  like  an  Ethiopian  serenader 
half  got-up,  and  so  broiled  and  peppered  that  I  was  more  like  a 
devilled  kidney  than  anything  else  I  can  think  of. " — A  Moosehead 
Journal. 

"  Who  has  never  felt  an  almost  irresistible  temptation,  and 
seemingly  not  self-originated,  to  let  himself  go  ?  to  let  his  mind 
gallop  and  kick  and  cavort  and  roll  like  a  horse  turned  loose  ? 
in  short,  as  we  Yankees  say,  '  to  speak  out  in  meeting  ? '  Who 
never  had  it  suggested  to  him  by  the  fiend  to  break  in  at  a  fu- 
neral with  the  real  character  of  the  deceased  instead  of  that 
Mrs.  Grundyfied  view  of  him  which  the  clergyman  is  so  pain- 
fully elaborating  in  his  prayer  ?  " — Essay  on  Witchcraft. 


HOLMES,  1809-1894. 

Biographical  Outline. — Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  born 
at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  August  29,  1809;  father  an  orthodox 
Congregational  clergyman,  mother  descended  from  Evart  Jan- 
sen  Wendell,  who  came  from  Friesland  in  1640;  ancestors 
well-to-do ;  at  fifteen  Holmes  enters  Phillips  Academy,  An- 
dover,  where  he  remains  one  year;  at  sixteen  he  enters  Har- 
vard (1825)  and  is  graduated  in  1829;  while  at  Andover  he 
makes  a  spirited  translation  of  a  passage  in  Virgil ;  studies 
law  one  year  ;  begins  the  study  of  medicine  ;  goes  to  Europe 
in  1833,  and  spends  nearly  three  years  in  the  medical  schools 
and  hospitals  of  London  and  Paris;  returns  in  1836,  and 
takes  his  M.D.  at  Harvard  at  the  same  commencement  when 
he  reads  his  "  Metrical  Essay  "  before  Phi  Beta  Kappa;  pub- 
lishes his  first  volume  of  poems  in  1836,  including  "  Old 
Ironsides,"  which  dates  back  to  1830;  in  1837-39  aids  in 
establishing  the  Tremont  Medical  School ;  is  Professor  of 
Anatomy  and  Physiology  at  Dartmouth  College,  1839—40  ;  re- 
turns to  Boston  in  1840,  and  practises  medicine  till  1847,  when 
he  accepts  the  Harvard  professorship  of  Anatomy,  which  he 
holds  actively  till  1882  and  as  emeritus  till  his  death;  mar- 
ries Amelia  Lee  Jackson  in  1840;  publishes  "Homoeopathy 
and  its  Kindred  Delusions"  in  1842  and  successive  volumes 
of  poems  in  1846,  1849,  and  1850;  in  1843  his  "  Boylston 
Prize  Essays"  gain  him  a  great  medical  reputation;  in  1849 
he  builds  his  summer  home  in  Pittsfield,  Mass.  ;  in  1857, 
with  the  founding  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  he  begins  his 
"  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table,"  which  appeared  as  a  vol- 
ume in  1858;  in  1860  he  publishes  "The  Professor  at  the 

837 


838  HOLMES 

Breakfast-Table"  and  in  1872  "The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast- 
Table;  "  dates  of  publication  of  other  works  are  as  follows: 
"Currents  and  Counter-Currents  in  Medical  Science,"  1861  ; 
"Elsie  Venner,"  1861  ;  "Songs  in  Many  Keys,"  1861  ; 
"  Soundings  from  the  Atlantic,"  1863  ;  "  Humorous  Poems," 
1865;  "The  Guardian  Angel,"  1867;  "Mechanism  in 
Thought  and  Morals,"  1861 ;  "Songs  of  Many  Seasons," 
1874;  "A  Memoir  of  Motley,"  1878;  "  The  Iron  Gate," 
1880;  "  Pages  from  an  Old  Volume  of  Life," 1883  ;  "Medi- 
cal Essays,"  1883;  "Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,"  1884;  "A 
Moral  Antipathy,"  1885  ;  "  Our  Hundred  Days  in  Europe," 
1887;  "Before  the  Curfew,"  1888;  and  "Over  the  Tea- 
Cups,"  1890;  Holmes  visits  Europe  in  1886;  dies  in  Bos- 
ton October  7,  1894. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON    HOLMES'S   STYLE. 

Whittier,  J.  G.,  "Literary  Recreations."     Boston,  1872,  Osgood,    128- 

137- 
Stedman,  E.  C.,  "  Poets  of  America."     Boston,  1885,  Houghton,  Mifflin 

&  (  0-.  273-304. 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  "American  Literature."  Boston,  1887,  Ticknor,  76-77. 
\Vhipple,  E.  P.,  "Essays  and  Reviews."  Boston,  1861,  Ticknor,  i: 

66-68. 

Taylor,  B.,  "  Essays  and  Notes."  New  York,  1880,  Putnam,  301-302. 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  "American  Literature."  New  York,  1893,  Putnam, 

2 :   204-219. 

Kennedy,  W.  S.,  "O.  W.  Holmes."     Boston,  1883,  Cassino  &  Co. 
Nichol,  J.,  "American  Literature."     Edinburgh,    1882,  Black,  357-363 

and  407-411. 
Ilaweis,    H.    R.,    "American    Humorists."     London,    1883,    Chatto  & 

Windus,  37-73. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  "Poetical  Works."     Boston,    1892,  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 

Co.,  3  :  84-85. 

Walsh,  W.  S.,  "Pen  Pictures."     New  York,  1886,  Putnam,  144-150. 
Whittier,  J.  G.,  "  Poetical  Works."     Boston,    1888,    Houghton,   Mifflin 

&  Co.,  4  :    142-143. 
Griswold,   R.  W.,  "Poets  of  America."     Philadelphia,   1846,   Carey  & 

Hart,  341-347- 


HOLMES  839 

Mitford,  Miss  M.  R.,  "Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life."     New  York, 

1851. 

Blue kwood's  Magazine,  152  :    194-207. 
Harper's  Magazine,  83:  277-385  (G.  W.  Curtis). 
Atlantic  Monthly,   27  :  653  (Howells)  ;   46  :   704-705  (G.   P.  Lathrop) ; 

70:  401-402  (Whittier). 

Scribner's  Magazine,  18  :    n  7-127  (F.  II.  Underwood);   16  :    791. 
Forum,  18  :  271-287  (J.  W.  Chadwick). 
Literary  World,  25  :  350;    17:   23;    16:  429-431. 
Review  of  Reviews,  10 :  495-501  (E.  E.  Hale). 
Critic,    22:   242-257   and   259;   3:  191    (J.    H.    Morse);   8  :  46  (H.  R. 

Haweis) ;  6:    I  and  13  (A.  W.  Rollins);  4:   109  (O.  W.  Holmes) 

and  133;   5:   97. 

Dial  (Ch.),  17:  215-217;    12:    209-219  (E.  G.  Johnson). 
North    American    Review,    64  :   208-216   (Palfrey);    68  :   201-203  (F. 

Bowen) ;    159  :   669-677  (H.  C.  Lodge). 
North  British  Revievv,  61  :   476-480. 
Macmillan''s  Magazine,  4  :  305-309  (J.  M.  Ludlow). 
International  Revie^M,  8  :  501-514  (R.  O.  Palmer). 
Author,  i  :    167-171  (G.  P.  Lovejoy). 
Arena,  4:    129-142  (G.  Stewart). 
Good  Words,  28  :  298-305  (F.  H.  Underwood). 
Spectator,  61  :   855-858  (T.  T.  Palgrave). 
Every  Saturday,  14  :   466-470. 
Appleton's  Journal,  12  :    545-548. 
Eclectic  Magazine,  80 :   632-638  (W.  H.  Bidwell). 
Saturday  Review,  57:  65 1-654  (E.  E.  Brown). 
Irish  Quarterly  Review,  5  :    193-221. 
Academy,  29  :  37-39  (Walter  Lewin). 
Fortnightly  Revie^v,  46  :  235-246  (De  Lille). 
Athenaum,  1884  (2),  274  (E.  W.  Gosse)  ;   1888  (i),  787. 
National  Magazine,  3  :  502-508. 
British  Quarterly  Rnnew,  52  :   324-351. 
Belgravia,  20:    222-233  (K.  Cook). 
Dublin  University  Magazine,  159:  401-405  ;    64:   208-210;   84:   376- 

383  (H.  F.  G.). 


840  HOLMES 


PARTICULAR    CHARACTERISTICS. 

Introductory  Note. — What  most  impresses  the  reader, 
after  a  careful  review  of  the  writings  of  Holmes,  is  his  won- 
derful versatility.  We  know  not  where  he  most  excels, 
whether  as  poet,  essayist,  novelist,  monologuist,  critic,  or  close 
scientific  writer.  In  the  words  of  an  English  critic:  "  To 
borrow  a  vulgar  phrase,  we  never  know  where  to  have  him, 
and  his  pages  are  protean  in  their,  ever-changing  aspects. 
Pathology,  divinity,  physiology, — the  world,  the 
flesh,  and  the  devil,  the  trotting-track,  the  prize-ring,  society 
and  the  musical  glasses — all  are  jumbled  up  together,  and  yet 
with  a  perceptible  intellectual  sequence,  in  which  imagina- 
tion, with  some  kind  of  plausibility,  can  follow  the  connecting 
threads.  .  .  .  He  might  belong  to  half  a  dozen  schools 
of  philosophy — to  the  cynical,  to  the  lachrymose,  and,  above 
all,  to  the  optimistic,  with  a  strong  dash  of  the  epicurean." 
It  is  obviously  impossible  to  illustrate  this  quality  by  any  short 
series  of  detached  paragraphs.  An  idea  of  Holmes's  versatil- 
ity must  be  gained  from  a  study  of  his  works  as  a  whole.  We 
therefore  begin  our  systematic  analysis  with  a  quality  that 
lends  itself  to  more  concise  definition  and  illustration. 


x.  Buoyancy— Youthfulness — Optimism. — No  qual- 
ity of  Holmes's  style  and  character  impresses  the  reader  more 
constantly  than  his  perennial  youthfulness — his  habit  of  look- 
ing at  the  things  of  earth  and  time  through  the  eyes  of  an  in- 
genuous boy. 

"  [His  longevity]  is  not,  however,  without  a  certain  aspect 
of  propriety.  If  not  the  youngest  in  years,  he  was  the  young- 
est of  them  all  in  heart.  .  .  .  He  never  left  the  cheerful 
little  ghost  of  his  boyhood  behind  him." — Literary  World. 

"  Before  his  day  the  sons  of  the  Puritans  were  hardly  ripe 
for  the  doctrine  that  there  is  a  time  to  laugh,  that  humor  is 


HOLMES  841 

quite  as  helpful  a  constituent  of  life  as  gravity  or  gloom." — 
E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  The  cheerful  raj's  of  faith  which,  like  the  notes  of  birds 
wafted  to  one  from  summer  woodlands,  suggest  only  tranquil 
happiness  and  peace." — Ray  Palmer. 

"[In  his  eightieth  year]  still  the  youngest  man  alive." — 
Lowell. 

"  [The  Poem  on  Contentment^  is  a  most  frank  confession  of 
his  liking  for  life's  fair  and  pleasant  things.  .  .  .  He  was 
neither  stoic  nor  ascetic;  neither  indifferent  to  life's  sweet  and 
pleasant  things  nor,  while  hankering  for  their  possession,  did 
he  repress  his  noble  rage  and  freeze  the  genial  currents  of  his 
soul.  His  was  an  undisguised  enjoyment  of  earthly  comforts; 
a  happy  confidence  in  the  excellence  and  glory  of  our  present 
life;  a  persuasion,  as  one  has  said,  'that  if  God  made  us, 
then  he  also  meant  us  ;  '  and  he  held  to  these  things  so  earn- 
estly, so  pleasantly,  so  cheerfully,  that  he  could  not  help  com- 
municating them  to  everything  he  wrote.  .  .  .  He  wrote 
in  such  a  jocund  way,  with  such  animal  spirits  and  pure  ab- 
surdity."—-John  Chadwick. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Wherever  the  trotting  horse  goes,  he  carries  in  his  train 
brisk  omnibuses,  lively  baker's  carts,  and  therefore  hot  rolls, 
the  jolly  butcher's  wagon,  the  cheerful  gig,  the  wholesome  after- 
noon drive  with  wife  and  child, — all  the  forms  of  moral  excel- 
lence, except  truth,  which  does  not  agree  with  any  kind  of  horse 
flesh."  —  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  I  don't  know  whether  our  literary  professional  people  are 
more  amiable  than  they  are  in  other  places,  but  certainly  quar- 
relling is  out  of  fashion  among  them.  This  could  never  be  if 
they  were  in  the  habit  of  secret  anonymous  puffing  of  each  other. 
That  is  the  kind  of  underground  machinery  which  manufactures 
false  reputations  and  genuine  hatreds.  On  the  other  hand,  I 
should  like  to  know  if  we  are  not  at  liberty  to  have  a  good  time 
together  and  say  the  pleasantest  things  we  can  think  of  to  each 


842  HOLMES 

other,  when  any  of  us  reaches  his  thirtieth  or  fortieth  or  fiftieth 
or  eightieth  birthday." —  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

"The  Professor  has  been  to  see  me.  Came  in,  glorious,  at  about 
twelve  o'clock  last  night.  Said  he  had  been  with  '  the  boys.' 
On  inquiry,  found  out  that  '  the  boys '  were  certain  baklish  and 
grayish  gentlemen  that  one  sees  or  hears  of  in  various  important 
stations  of  society.  The  Professor  is  one  of  the  same  set,  but  he 
always  talks  as  if  he  had  been  out  of  college  about  ten  years. 
He  calls  them  sometimes  '  the  boys,'  and  sometimes  '  the  old 
fellows.'  Call  them  by  the  latter  title,  and  see  how  he  likes  it. — 
Well,  he  came  in  last  night  glorious,  as  I  was  saying.  .  . 
But  the  Professor  says  he  always  gets  tipsy  in  old  memories. 
He  was,  I  forget  how  many  years  old  when  he  went  to  the  meet- 
ing ;  just  turned  of  twenty  now, — he  said.  He  made  various 
youthful  proposals  to  me,  including  a  duet  under  the  landlady's 
daughter's  window.  He  had  just  learned  a  trick,  he  said,  of  one 
of  the  boys  of  getting  a  splendid  bass  out  of  a  door  panel  by  rub- 
bing it  with  the  palm  of  the  hand.  Offered  to  sing  '  The  Sky  is 
Bright,'  accompanying  himself  on  the  front  door,  if  I  would  go 
down  a'nd  help  in  the  chorus.  .  .  .  All  at  once  he  jumped 
up  and  said, — Don't  you  want  to  hear  what  I  read  to  the  boys  ? 
The  Professor  then  read — 

'  Flash  out  a  stream  of  blood-red  wine  !  — 

For  I  would  drink  to  other  days  ; 
And  brighter  shall  their  memory  shine, 

Seen  flaming  through  its  crimson  blaze. 
The  roses  die,  the  summers  fade  ; 

But  every  ghost  of  boyhood's  dream 
By  nature's  magic  power  is  laid 

To  sleep  beneath  this  blood-red  stream  [etc.].'  " 

—  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

2.  Colloquial  Habit  —  Familiarity  —  Self-Revela- 
tion.— Closely  allied  with  his  buoyancy  and  often  united 
with  it  in  expression  is  the  colloquial  element  in  Holmes. 
He  talks  not  at  you  but  with  you. 

"  The  colloquial  habit  of  the  Autocrat  is  ...  so 
marked  generally  in  Holmes's  writings  as  to  be  called  distinc- 
tive. .  .  .  Without  the  private  personal  touch  of  the 


HOLMES  843 

essayist  in  his  stories  they  would  not  be  his.  His  colloquial 
habit  is  very  winning  when  governed  by  a  natural  delicacy  and 
an  exquisite  literary  instinct.  It  is  the  quality  of  all  the  au- 
thors who  are  distinctly  loved  as  persons  by  their  readers,  and 
it  is  to  this  class  that  Holmes  especially  belongs." — George 
William  Curtis. 

"  There  is  something  akin  to  affection  which  connects  such 
poets  with  their  readers,  when  poet  and  reader  are  at  their 
best.  They  cannot  be  Shelleys,  but  they  win  by  warmth, 
though  they  dazzle  not  by  splendor.  .  .  .  Manliness 
finds  in  Holmes  a  friend  and  culture  a  companion." — C.  F. 
Richardson. 

"  He  was — and  is — one  of  the  few  writers  who  are  present 
at  the  reading  of  their  own  works — a  conversationalist  in  type, 
on  paper — a  dear  friend  living  between  the  covers  of  a  printed 
book." — Edii'ard  R.  Hale. 

"  This  Bostonian  who  was  his  own  Boswell.  ...  It 
needed  the  nineteenth  century  to  produce  an  Autocrat  with  so 
much  more  of  intellectual  hospitality  than  the  brave  old  Doc- 
tor who  dogmatised  over  Mrs.  Thrale's  teacups ;  a  spectator, 
whose  vision  went  so  much  deeper  than  that  of  the  smiling 
Addison." — Helen  M.  Cone. 

"  [It  is]  the  Autocrat  in  his  best  moods — those  moments 
when,  all  barriers  of  invention  and  situation  broken  down,  the 
author  talks  face  to  face,  or  rather  soul  to  soul,  consciousness 
to  consciousness,  with  the  reader." — W.  D.  Howells. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Do  not  think,  because  I  talk  to  you  of  many  subjects  briefly, 
that  I  should  not  find  it  much  lazier  work  to  take  each  one  of 
them  and  dilute  it  down  to  an  essay.  Borrow  some  of  my  old 
college  themes  and  water  my  remarks  to  suit  yourselves." — The 
Autocrat  of  t lie  Breakfast-  Table. 

"I  don't  believe  any  man  ever  talked  like  that  in  this  world. 
I  don't  believe  7  talked  just  so  ;  but  the  fact  is,  in  reporting  one's 


844  HOLMES 

conversation,  one  cannot  help  It/air-ing  it  up  more  or  less,  iron- 
ing out  crumpled  paragraphs,  starching  limp  ones,  and  crimping 
and  plaiting  a  little  sometimes  ;  it  is  as  natural  as  prinking  at 
the  looking-glass." — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast- Table. 

"Apropos  of  Horses.  Do  you  know  how  important  good 
jockeying  is  to  authors  ?  Judicious  management ;  letting  the 
public  see  your  animal  just  enough,  not  too  much;  holding  him 
up  hard  when  the  market  is  too  full  of  him  ;  letting  him  out  at 
just  the  right  buying  intervals;  always  gently  feeling  his  mouth  ; 
never  slacking  and  never  jerking  the  rein  ; — this  is  what  I  mean 
by  jockeying." —  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

"  A  lyric  conception — my  friend,  the  Poet  said — hits  me  like  a 
bullet  in  the  forehead.  I  have  often  had  the  blood  drop  from  my 
cheeks  when  it  struck,  and  felt  that  I  turned  white  as  death. 
Then  comes  a  creeping  as  of  centipedes  running  down  the  spine, 
then  a  gasp  and  a  great  jump  of  the  heart, — then  a  sudden  flush 
and  a  beating  in  the  vessels  of  the  head,  then  a  long  sigh, — and 
the  poem  is  written." — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

3.  Unconventionality.  —  Simple  Treatment  of 
Weighty  Themes. — This  is  another  closely  allied  trait  of 
Holmes,  mingled,  as  it  so  often  is,  with  his  buoyant  and 
colloquial  manner.  While  the  genial  Doctor  has  not  the  awe- 
lessness  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  discuss 
the  most  serious  questions  of  life  and  death  in  a  tone  almost 
playful  in  its  serene  fearlessness. 

"  The  researches  of  most  scientific  men,  especially  in  ab- 
struse subjects,  like  the  relations  of  body  and  mind,  are  pre- 
served in  works  which  the  public  cannot  understand  if  they 
should  try.  What  Tyndall  has  done  in  the  interpretation  of 
the  laws  of  nature  is  done  even  more  brilliantly  by  Holmes ; 
and  this  is  not  due  to  any  letting  down  of  the  subject ;  it  is 
rather  furnishing  the  means  for  the  ordinary  mind  to  ascend 
to  the  higher  level  of  thought.  .  .  .  [Of  the  Autocrat's 
first  appearance]  The  truth  was  the  prosaic  folk  had  no  way 
to  estimate  Holmes.  They  wrote  only  stately  sentences,  while 
he  was  free  when  he  chose  to  ut>e  the  simplest  language  of 


HOLMES  845 

every-day  life.  The  ideas  they  would  formally  promulgate 
in  methodical  order  he  lashed  upon  the  reader  with  a  daz- 
zling wit." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  [He  has]  the  common-sense  of  the  Franklin  quality." — 
C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  There  is  no  straining  for  effect;  simple,  natural  thoughts 
are  expressed  in  simple  and  perfectly  transparent  language." 

—  Whittier. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Insanity  is  often  the  logic  of  an  accurate  mind  over-taxed. 
Good  mental  machinery  ought  to  break  its  own  wheels  and 
levers,  if  anything  is  thrust  among  them  suddenly  which  tends  to 
stop  them  or  reverse  their  motion.  A  weak  mind  does  not  ac- 
cumulate force  enough  to  hurt  itself  ;  stupidity  often  saves  a  man 
from  going  mad.  We  frequently  see  persons  in  insane  hospitals, 
sent  there  in  consequence  of  what  are  called  religious  mental  dis- 
turbances. I  confess  that  I  think  better  of  them  than  of  many 
who  hold  the  same  notions,  and  keep  their  wits  and  appear  to 
enjoy  life  very  well,  outside  of  the  asylums.  Any  decent  person 
ought  to  go  mad,  if  he  really  holds  such  and  such  opinions.  It  is 
very  much  to  his  discredit  in  every  point  of  view  if  he  does  not." 

—  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

"But  I'll  tell  you  what  the  Professor  said  to  the  Poet  the  other 
day. — '  My  boy,'  said  he,  '  I  can  work  a  great  deal  cheaper  than 
you,  because  I  keep  all  my  goods  in  the  lower  story.  You  have 
to  hoist  yours  into  the  upper  stories  of  the  brain  and  let  them 
down  again  to  your  customers.  I  take  mine  in  at  the  level  of  the 
ground,  and  send  them  off  at  my  door-step  almost  without  lifting. 
I  tell  you,  the  higher  a  man  has  to  carry  the  raw  material  of  thought 
before  he  works  it  up,  the  more  it  costs  him  in  blood,  nerve,  and 
muscle.'  Coleridge  knew  all  this  very  well  when  he  advised  every 
literary  man  to  have  a  profession.1' — The  Autocrat  of  the  Break- 
fast- Table. 

"  The  more  we  study  the  body  and  the  mind,  the  more  we  find 
both  to  be  governed,  not  by  but  according  to  laws,  such  as  we 
observe  in  the  larger  universe. — You  think  you  know  all  about 
•walking — don't  you,  now?  Well,  how  do  you  suppose  your 
lower  limbs  are  held  to  your  body  ?  They  are  sucked  up  by  two 


846  HOLMES 

cupping  vessels,  (' cotoloid  ' — cup-like—cavities)  and  held  there 
as  long  as  you  live,  and  longer.  At  any  rate,  you  think  you 
move  them  backward  and  forward  at  such  a  rate  as  your  will  de- 
termines, don't  you?  On  the  contrary,  they  swing  just  as  any 
other  pendulums  swing,  at  a  fixed  rate,  determined  by  their 
length.  You  can  alter  this  by  muscular  power,  just  as  you  can 
take  hold  of  the  pendulum  of  a  clock  and  make  it  move  faster  or 
slower  ;  but  your  ordinary  gait  is  timed  by  the  same  mechanism 
as  the  movements  of  the  solar  system." — The  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast-  Table. 

"  There  are  three  wicks,  you  know,  to  the  lamp  of  a  man's  life  ; 
brain,  blood,  and  breath.  Press  the  brain  a  little,  its  light  goes 
out,  followed  by  both  the  others.  Stop  the  heart  a  min-ute,  and 
out  go  all  three  of  the  wicks.  Choke  the  air  out  of  lungs,  and 
presently  the  fluid  ceases  to  supply  the  other  centers  of  flame, 
and  all  is  soon  stagnation,  cold,  and  darkness.  The  '  tripod  of 
life  '  a  French  physiologist  called  these  three  organs.  It  is  all 
clear  enough  which  leg  of  the  tripod  is  going  to  break  down  here. 
I  could  tell  you  exactly  what  the  difficulty  is  ;  —which  would  be 
as  intelligible  and  amusing  as  a  watchmaker's  description  of  a 
diseased  timekeeper  to  a  ploughman." —  The  Professor  at  the 
Breakfast-  Table. 

4.  Piquant  Satire — Graceful  Badinage. — Holmes's 
satire  is  unlike  that  of  any  other  of  our  great  humorists, 
though  it  has  much  of  the  tone  of  Lamb  and  of  Hood. 

"  His  metrical  satires  are  of  the  amiable  sort  that  debars 
him  from  kinsmanship  with  the  Juvenals  of  old  or  the  Popes 
and  Churchills  of  more  recent  time.  .  .  .  Yet  he  is  a 
keen  observer  of  the  follies  and  chances  which  satire  makes 
its  food.  As  his  humor  had  relaxed  the  grimness  of  a  Puritan 
constituency,  so  his  prose  satire  did  much  to  liberalize  their 
clerical  system." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  He  deals  with  the  vanities,  the  foibles,  the  faults  of  man- 
kind, good-naturedly  and  almost  sympathizingly  suggesting 
excuses  for  the  folly  which  he  tosses  about  on  the  horns  of  his 
ridicule. ' ' —  Whittier. 

"  He  looks  at  folly  and  pretension  from  the  highest  pin- 


HOLMES  847 

nacle  of  scorn.  They  never  provoke  his  indignation,  for  to 
him  they  are  too  mean  to  justify  anger,  and  are  hardly  worth 
petulance." — E.  P.  Whiffle. 

'•  All  his  trenchant  bits  of  criticism  and  pretended  dogma- 
tism have  attached  to  them,  like  a  corollary,  a  little  hint  that 
the  cure  for  it  all  is  charity — the  understanding  other  men 
better.  .  .  .  Do  you  remember  '  Urania,  a  Rhymed  Les- 
son,' away  back  in  his  younger  days — with  what  skilful 
good  humor  it  picked  out  all  the  little  solecisms  of  dress, 
manners,  and  talk,  and  yet  left  the  perpetrators,  while  en- 
tirely cured,  feeling  as  though  they  were  laughed  with  and 
not  at  ?"— tf.  W.  Gilder. 

"  Holmes's  pen  has  the  point  of  a  French  rapier,  and  draws 
blood  whenever  he  chooses  to  use  it  with  that  intent." — Ray 
Palmer. 

"  Holmes  is  distinctively  and  purely  a  satirist,  and  for  a 
lifetime  has  been  lashing  others  with  the  most  stinging  and 
excoriating  satire  (tempered  with  humor  and  good-nature). 
.  .  .  When  at  his  best,  his  humor  has  the  genial,  kindly 
character  which  marks  that  of  all  great  humorists  ;  but  too 
often  it  is  only  an  ironical  smirk,  a  sardonical  grin,  a  laughing 
at  others  instead  of  with  them." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

"  The  two  bete  noires  of  Holmes  are  homoeopathy  and  end- 
less punishment,  and  he  never  lets  an  opportunity  pass  of 
giving  a  thrust  at  either." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  took  more  of  it  [the  pie]  than  was  good  for  me, — as  much 
as  eighty-five  per  cent.,  I  should  think, — and  had  an  indigestion 
in  consequence.  While  I  was  suffering  from  it,  I  wrote  some 
sadly  desponding  poems  and  a  theological  essay  which  took  a 
very  melancholy  view  of  creation.  When  I  got  better  I  labelled 
them  all  pie-crust,  and  laid  them  by  as  scarecrows  and  solemn 
warnings.  I  have  a  number  of  books  on  my  shelves  that  I  should 
like  to  label  with  some  such  title  ;  but,  as  they  have  great  names 


848  HOLMES 

on  their  title-pages, — Doctors  of  Divinity,  some  of  them, — it 
wouldn't  do." — 7 he  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  There  are  not  a  few  who,  even  in  this  life,  seem  to  be  pre- 
paring themselves  for  that  smileless  eternity  to  which  they  look 
forward  by  banishing  all  gayety  from  their  hearts  and  all  joyous- 
ness  from  their  countenances.  I  meet  one  such  in  the  street  not 
unfrequently,  a  person  of  intelligence  and  education,  but  who 
gives  me  (and  all  that  he  passes)  such  a  rayless  and  chilling  look 
of  recognition, — something  as  if  he  were  one  of  Heaven's  assess- 
ors come  down  to  '  doom '  every  acquaintance  he  met, — that  I 
have  sometimes  begun  to  sneeze  on  the  spot,  and  gone  home 
with  a  violent  cold,  dating  from  that  instant.  I  don't  doubt  he 
would  cut  his  kitten's  tail  off  if  he  caught  her  playing  with  it. 
Please  tell  me  who  taught  her  to  play  with  it?" — The  Autocrat 
of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  Every  person's  feelings  have  a  front-door  and  a  side-door  by 
which  they  may  be  entered.  .  .  .  You  can  keep  the  world 
out  from  your  front-door,  or  receive  visitors  only  when  you  are 
ready  for  them  ;  but  those  of  your  own  flesh  and  blood,  or  of 
certain  degrees  of  intimacy,  can  come  in  at  the  side-door,  if  they 
will,  at  any  hour  and  in  any  mood.  Some  of  them  have  a  scale 
of  your  whole  nervous  system,  and  can  play  all  the  gamut  of 
your  sensibilities  in  semitones, — touching  the  naked  nerve-pulps 
as  a  pianist  strikes  the  keys  of  his  instrument.  .  .  .  Married 
life  is  the  school  in  which  the  most  accomplished  artists  in 
this  department  are  found.  A  delicate  woman  is  the  best  in- 
strument ;  she  has  such  a  magnificent  compass  of  sensibilities ! 
From  the  deep  inward  moan  which  follows  pressure  on  the  great 
nerves  of  right  to  the  sharp  cry  as  the  filaments  of  taste  are 
struck  with  a  crashing  sweep,  is  a  range  which  no  other  instru- 
ment possesses.  A  few  exercises  on  it  daily  at  home  fit  a  man 
wonderfully  for  his  habitual  labors,  and  refresh  him  immensely 
when  he  returns  from  them.  No  stranger  can  get  a  great  many 
notes  of  torture  out  of  a  human  soul ;  it  takes  one  that  knows 
it  well, — parent,  child,  brother,  sister,  intimate.  Be  very  careful 
to  whom  you  give  a  side-door  key  ;  too  many  have  them  al- 
ready.i' — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast- Table. 


HOLMES  849 

5.  Exuberant,  Dazzling  Wit. — All  his  critics  unite 
in  ascribing  to  Holmes  a  wit  equalled  only  by  that  of  Hood 
and  Lowell. 

"  The  movement  of  his  wit  is  so  swift  that  its  presence  is 
known  only  when  it  strikes.  He  will  sometimes,  as  it  were, 
blind  the  eyes  of  his  victims  with  diamond  dust,  then  pelt 
them  pitilessly  with  scoffing  compliments.  He  passes  from 
the  sharp  and  stinging  gibe  to  the  most  grotesque  exaggera- 
tions of  drollery  with  a  most  bewildering  rapidity." — E.  P. 
\Vhipple. 

"There's  Holmes,  who  is  matchless  among  you  for  wit ; 
A  Leyden-jar  always  full-charged,  from  which  flit 
The  electrical  tingles  of  hit  after  hit." — Lowell. 

"Dr.  Holmes  has  proved  his  title  to  be  a  wit  in  the  earlier 
and  higher  sense  of  the  word,  when  it  meant  a  man  of  genius, 
a  player  upon  thoughts  rather  than  upon  words." — Lowell. 

"  A.  restless  wit  that  sees  the  different  sides,  the  contradic- 
tions, and  cannot  forbear  to  flash  upon  the  eye  all  the  various 
angles  of  truth,  while  never  ceasing  to  take  the  view  of  the 
poet." — G.  P.  Lathrop. 

"  If  any  of  our  readers  need  amusement  and  the  wholesome 
alternative  of  a  hearty  laugh,  we  commend  them,  not  to  Dr. 
Holmes  the  physician,  but  to  Dr.  Holmes  the  scholar,  the  wit, 
and  the  humorist.  .  .  .  He  was  born  for  the  '  laughter 
cure,'  as  certainly  Priessnitz  was  for  the  '  water-cure,'  and  has 
been  quite  as  successful  in  his  way." — H'hittier. 

"  keen  analysis 

Of  men  and  moods,  electric  wit, 
Free  play  of  mirth,  and  tenderness 
To  heal  the  slightest  wound  from  it." — Whittier. 


54 


850  HOLMES 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  have  just  been  to  hear  some  music-pounding.  It  was  a 
young  woman,  with  as  many  white  muslin  flounces  round  her 
as  the  planet  has  rings,  that  did  it.  She  gave  the  music-stool  a 
twirl  or  two  and  fluffed  down  on  it  like  a  whirl  of  soap-suds  in 
a  hand-basin.  Then  she  pushed  up  her  cuffs  as  if  she  were 
going  to  fight  for  the  champion's  belt.  Then  she  worked  her 
wrists  and  her  hands,  to  limber  'em,  I  suppose,  and  spread  out 
her  fingers  till  they  looked  as  though"  they  would  pretty  much 
cover  the  key-board,  from  the  growling  end  to  the  little  squeaky 
one.  Then  those  two  hands  of  hers  made  a  jump  at  the  keys  as 
if  they  were  a  couple  of  tigers  coming  down  on  a  flock  of  black 
and  white  sheep,  and  the  piano  gave  a  great  howl,  as  if  its  tail 
had  been  trod  on." — The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  So  never  mind  what  your  cousins,  brothers,  sisters,  uncles, 
aunts,  and  the  rest,  say  about  that  fine  poem  you  have  written, 
but  send  it  (postage  paid)  to  the  editors,  if  there  are  any,  of  the 
Atlantic — which,  by  the  way,  is  not  so  called  because  it  is  a 
notion,  as  some  dull  wits  wish  they  had  said,  but  are  too  late." 

—  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

"  My  acquaintance  with  the  French  language  is  very  imperfect, 
I  having  never  studied  it  anywhere  but  in  Paris,  which  is  awk- 
ward, as  B.  F.  devotes  himself  to  it  with  the  peculiar  advantage  of 
an  Alsatian  teacher." — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  Neither  will  I  pretend  that  I  am  so  unused  to  the  more  per- 
ishable smoking  contrivance  that  a  few  whiffs  would  make  me 
feel  as  if  I  Jay  in  aground-swell  on  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  I  am  not 
unacquainted  with  that  fusiform,  spiral-wound  bundle  of  chopped 
stems  and,  miscellaneous  incombustibles,  the  cigar,  so  called,  of 
the  shops — which  to  '  draw '  asks  the  suction-power  of  a  nursling 
infant  Hercules  and  to  relish,  the  leathery  palate  of  old  Silenus." 

—  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

6.  Fanciful  Humor. — "  To  write  good  comic  verse  is  a 
different  thing  from  writing  good  comic  poetry.  A  jest  or  a 
sharp  saying  may  easily  be  made  to  rhyme  ;  but  to  blend  ludi- 
crous ideas  with  fancy  and  imagination  and  display  in  their 


HOLMES  851 

conception  and  expression  the  same  poetic  qualities  usually 
exercised  in  serious  composition,  is  a  rare  distinction.  Among 
American  poets  we  know  of  no  one  who  excels  Holmes  in  this 
difficult  branch  of  art."— E.  P.  IVhipple. 

"  [Holmes's  humor  is]  fun  shading  down  to  seriousness  and 
seriousness  shading  up  to  fun." — Lowell. 

"  Hood  is  great  both  in  smiles  and  tears,  but  his  prevailing 
mood  is  all  absorbing,  and  he  is  either  all  smiles  or  all  tears 
at  any  one  time.  Holmes  is  as  funny  in  his  different  way, 
though  by  no  means  so  deeply  pathetic  and  startling  as  the 
other.  In  recompense  he  often  produces  a  delightful  ming- 
ling of  the  sad  and  gay,  scarcely  found  in  Hood,  and  has  a 
marvellous  gift,  moreover,  of  sliding  from  the  real  to  the  ideal 
— beginning  with  jest  and  ending  with  poetry." — Literary 
World. 

"  You  with  the  classic  few  belong 
Who  tempered  wisdom  with  a  smile." 

— Lowell. 

"It  does  not  appear  that  anyone  else  did  so  much  as  Dr. 
Holmes  to  change  the  social  temper  of  New  England,  to  make 
it  less  harsh  and  joyless,  and  to  make  easier  for  his  fellow- 
countrymen  the  transition  from  old  things  to  new." — John 
W.  Chadwick. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  never  thought  he  would  come  to  good,  when  I  heard  him 
attempting  to  sneer  at  an  unoffending  city  so  respectable  as  Bos- 
ton. After  a  man  begins  to  attack  the  State-House,  when  he  gets 
bitter  about  the  Frog-Pond,  you  may  be  sure  there  is  not  much 
left  of  him.  Poor  Edgar  Poe  died  in  the  hospital  soon  after  he 
got  into  this  way  of  talking  ;  and  so  sure  as  you  find  an  unfortu- 
nate fellow  reduced  to  this  pass,  you  had  better  begin  praying  for 
him  and  stop  lending  him  money,  for  he  is  on  his  last  legs." — 
The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast-  Table, 


852  HOLMES 

"  Certain  things  are  good  for  nothing  until  they  have  been  kept 
for  a  long  while  ;  and  some  are  good  for  nothing  until  they  have 
been  long  kept  and  used.  ...  Of  those  which  must  be  kept 
and  used  I  will  name  three  —  meerschaum  pipes,  violins,  and 
poems.  The  meerschaum  is  but  a  poor  affair  until  it  has  burned 
a  thousand  offerings  to  the  cloud-compelling  deities.  .  .  . 
Gradually  the  juices  which  the  broad  leaves  of  the  Great  Vegeta- 
ble had  sucked  up  from  an  acre  and  curdled  into  a  drachm  are 
diffused  through  its  thirsting  pores.  First  a  discoloration,  then  a 
stain,  and  at  last  a  rich,  glowing  umber  tint  spreading  over  the 
whole  surface.  Nature  true  to  her  old  brown  autumnal  hue,  you 
see — as  true  in  the  fire  of  the  meerschaum  as  in  the  sunshine  of 
October  !  And  then  the  cumulative  wealth  of  its  fragrant  remi- 
niscences !  He  who  inhales  its  vapors  takes  a  thousand  whiffs  in 
a  single  breath  ;  and  one  cannot  touch  it  without  awakening  the 
old  joys  that  hang  round  it  as  the  smell  of  the  flowers  clings  to 
the  dresses  of  the  daughters  of  the  house  of  Farina."—  The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

"  '  I  suppose  that  now  they  have  levelled  everything  they  are 
quiet  and  contented.  Have  they  any  of  those  uneasy  people  called 
reformers  ? '  " 

' ' '  Indeed  they  have,'  said  my  attendant.  '  There  are  the  Ortho- 
brachians,  who  declaim  against  the  shameful  abuse  of  the  left  arm 
and  hand,  and  insist  on  restoring  their  perfect  equality  with  the 
right.  Then  there  are  Isopodic  societies,  which  insist  upon  bring- 
ing back  the  original  equality  of  the  upper  and  lower  limbs.  If 
you  can  believe  it,  they  actually  practise  going  on  all  fours — 
generally  in  a  private  way,  a  few  of  them  together,  but  hoping  to 
bring  the  world  round  to  them  in  the  near  future.' " — Over  the 
Tea -Cups. 

7.  Pathos. — The  pathos  of  Holmes,  while  not  so  deep 
as  that  of  Hood  and  Steele,  which  it  resembles,  is  invariably 
natural  and  genuine.  There  is  no  mawkish  sentimentality  in 
his  pages  such  as  is  found  in  some  scenes  by  Dickens. 

"  The  poet  of  'The  Last  Leaf  was  among  the  first  to  teach 
his  countrymen  that  pathos  is  an  equal  part  of  true  humor ;  that 
sorrow  is  lightened  by  jest  and  jest  redeemed  from  coarseness 


HOLMES  853 

by  emotion,  under  most  conditions  of  this  our  evanescent 
human  life." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"After  some  comic  picture,  grotesque  phrase,  or  quick 
thrust,  the  reader  comes  suddenly  upon  a  stanza  of  perfect 
beauty  of  form,  with  the  gentlest  touch  of  natural  feeling." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  Still  in  thy  human  tenderness  they  feel 
The  honest  voice  and  beating  heart  of  Steele. " 

— Edmund  Gosse. 

"His  finest  humor  borders  close  upon  pathos." — W.  S. 
Kennedy. 

"  The  author  is  capable  of  moving  the  heart  as  well  as  of 
tickling  the  fancy." — Whittier. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  is  one  very  sad  thing  in  old  friendships,  to  every  mind 
that  is  really  moving  onward.  It  is  this  :  that  one  cannot  help 
using  his  early  friends  as  the  seaman  uses  the  log,  to  mark  his 
progress.  Every  now  and  then  we  throw  an  old  schoolmate  over 
the  stern  with  a  string  of  thought  tied  to  him,  and  look — I  am 
afraid  with  a  kind  of  luxurious  and  sanctimonious  compassion — 
to  see  the  rate  at  which  the  string  reels  off,  while  he  lies  there 
bobbing  up  and  down,  poor  fellow  !  and  we  are  dashing  along 
with  the  white  foam  and  bright  sparkle  at  our  bows  ; — the  ruffled 
bosom  of  prosperity  and  progress,  with  a  sprig  of  diamonds  stuck 
in  it  !  "—  Ike  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  I  never  laughed  at  my  landlady  after  she  had  told  me  her 
story,  but  I  often  cried — not  those  pattering  tears  that  run  off  the 
eaves  upon  our  neighbor's  yards,  the  stillicidium  of  self-conscious 
sentiment,  but  those  which  steal  noiselessly  through  their  con- 
duits until  they  reach  the  cisterns  lying  round  about  the  heart  ; 
those  tears  that  we  weep  inwardly  with  unchanging  features  ; — 
such  did  I  shed  for  her  often  when  the  imps  of  the  boarding-house 
Inferno  tugged  at  her  soul  with  their  red-hot  pincers." — The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  '  My  life  is  the  dying  pang  of  a  worn-out  race,  and  I  shall  go 


854  HOLMES 

down  alone  into  the  dust,  out  of  this  world  of  men  and  women, 
without  ever  knowing  the  fellowship  of  the  one  or  the  love  of  the 
other.  I  will  not  die  with  a  lie  rattling  in  my  throat.  If  another 
state  of  being  has  anything  worse  in  store  for  me,  I  have  had 
a.  long  apprenticeship  to  give  me  strength  that  I  may  bear  it. 
I  don't  believe  it,  Sir  !  I  have  too  much  faith  for  that.  God  has 
not  left  me  wholly  without  comfort,  even  here.  I  love  this  old 
place  where  I  was  born  ; — the  heart  of  the  world  beats  under  the 
three  hills  of  Boston,  Sir  !  I  love  this  great  land  with  so  many 
tall  men  in  it  and  so  many  good,  noble  women.'  His  eyes  turned 
to  the  silent  figure  by  his  pillow.  ll  have  learned  to  accept 
meekly  what  has  been  allotted  me,  but  I  cannot  honestly  say  that 
I  think  my  sin  has  been  greater  than  my  suffering.  I  bear  the 
ignorance  and  evil-doing  of  whole  generations  in  my  single  per- 
son. I  never  drew  a  breath  of  air  nor  took  a  step  that  was  not  a 
punishment  for  another's  fault.  I  may  have  had  many  wrong 
thoughts,  but  I  cannot  have  done  many  wrong  deeds, — for  my 
cage  has  been  a  narrow  one,  and  I  have  paced  it  alone.'" — The 
Professor  at  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

8.  Point— Epigram — Whimsical  Paradox. — "The 
most  obvious  characteristic  of  Holmes's  poetry  is  its  combined 
terseness  and  finish.  The  lines  are  often  poetical  proverbs 
or  epigrams,  with  vigor  and  point  in  every  phrase.  .  .  . 
And  as  much  is  true  of  the  Autocrat's  prose.  He  flashes  upon 
you  an  ingenious  suggestion  or  a  whimsical  paradox  clothed 
in  fantastic  guise,  and  without  giving  you  time  to  pause  upon 
the  truth  it  contains  or  to  reflect  even  whether  what  seems 
so  plausible  is  true,  presents  you  with  another  and  another  in 
endless  sequence." — F.  H.  Underwood. 

"  In  Holmes's  professional  and  literary  addresses  there 
is  a  compactness  and  polished  vigor  in  his  sentences,  an  ef- 
fectiveness and  point,  which  remind  one  of  the  pungency  of 
Junius." — Ray  Palmer. 

"You  may  open  any  of  the  three  [prose]  volumes  upon 
which  Holmes's  fame  really  rests,  and  find  on  every  page 
aphorisms  and  epigrams  which  deserve  to  be  framed,  put 


HOLMES  855 

down  in  your  private  note-book,  or  carried  in  your  heart." 
— H.  R.  Jfaweis. 

"  A  proverb  maker,  some  of  whose  words  are  not  without 
wings.  .  .  .  His  pertinent  maxims  are  so  frequent  that 
it  seems  as  if  he  had  jotted  them  down  from  time  to  time  and 
here  first  brought  them  to  application  ;  they  are  apothegms 
of  common  life  and  action,  often  of  mental  experience,  strung 
together  by  a  device  so  original  as  to  make  the  work  quite  a 
novelty  in  literature." — E.  C.  Stt-Jman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  can't  help  remembering  that  the  world's  great  men  have  not 
commonly  been  great  scholars,  nor  its  great  scholars  great  men." 

"  Put  not  your  trust  in  money,  but  put  your  money  in  trust." 

"  Controversy  equalizes  fools  and  wise  men  in  the  same  way — 
and  the  fools  know  it." 

"  Good  feeling  helps  society  to  make  liars  of  most  of  us — not 
absolute  liars,  but  such  careless  handlers  of  truth  that  its  sharp 
corners  get  terribly  rounded." 

"  The  axis  of  the  earth  sticks  out  visibly  through  the  centre  of 
each  and  every  town  or  city." 

"  Knowledge  and  timber  shouldn't  be  much  used  till  they  are 
seasoned." — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

"  Humility  is  the  first  of  the  virtues — for  other  people." — The 
Professor  at  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

9.  Sportive  Fancy. — "  Like  his  wit,  humor,  and  pathos, 
this  frolicsome  fancy  marks  everything  that  Holmes  has  writ- 
ten. In  the  contributions  [to  the  New  England  magazines] 
of  the  young  graduate,  the  high  spirits  of  a  frolicsome  fancy 
effervesce  and  sparkle." — George  William  Curtis. 

"  That  song  has  flecked  with  rosy  gold 
The  sails  that  fade  o'er  fancy's  sea." 

—  William  Winter. 

"  It  riots  in  his  measures  .  .  . — fancy  which  he  tenders 
in  lieu  of  imagination  and  power.  The  consecutive  poems  of 


856  HOLMES 

one  whose  fancy  plays  about  life  as  he  saw  it  may  be  a  feast 
complete  and  epicurean,  having  solid  dishes  and  fantastic, 
all  justly  savored,  cooked  with  discretion,  flanked  with  hon- 
est wine,  and  whose  cates  and  dainties,  even,  are  not  designed 
to  cloy — a  fancy  whose  glint,  if  not  imagination,  is  like  that 
of  the  sparks  struck  off  from  it.  ...  To  this  day  [1885] 
there  is  no  telling  whither  a  fancy,  once  caught  and  mounted, 
will  bear  this  lively  rider." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  [His]  sense  of  the  ludicrous  is  not  keener  than  his  sense 
of  the  beautiful ;  his  wit  and  humor^are  but  the  sportive  exer- 
cise of  a  fancy  and  imagination  which  he  has  abundantly  ex- 
ercised on  serious  topics." — E.  P.  \Vhipple. 

"  [I  am]  struck  anew  by  the  presence  of  that  prolific  fancy 
which  avoids  monotony." — Bayard  Taylor. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Let  us  get  up  and  see  what  is  going  on. — Oh, — oh, — oh  !  do 
you  know  what  has  got  hold  of  you  ?  It  is  the  great  red  dragon 
that  is  born  of  the  little  red  eggs  we  call  sparks,  with  his  hundred 
blowing  red  manes,  and  his  thousand  lashing  red  tails,  and  his 
multitudinous  red  eyes  glaring  at  every  crack  and  key-hole, 
and  his  countless  red  tongues  lapping  the  beams  he  is  going  to 
crunch  presently,  and  his  hot  breath  warping  the  panels  and 
cracking  the  glass  and  making  old  timber  sweat  that  had  forgotten 
it  was  ever  alive  with  sap.  Run  for  your  life  !  leap  !  or  you  will 
be  a  cinder  in  five  minutes,  that  nothing  but  a  coroner  would 
take  for  the  wreck  of  a  human  being." — The  Professor  at  the 
Breakfast-  Table. 

"  Next  year  you  will  find  the  grass  growing  tall  and  green 
where  the  stone  lay  ;  the  ground-bird  builds  her  nest  where  the 
beetle  had  his  hole  ;  the  dandelion  and  the  buttercup  are  growing 
there,  and  the  broad  fans  of  insect  angels  open  and  shut  over 
their  golden  disks,  as  the  rhythmic  waves  of  blissful  conscious- 
ness pulsate  through  their  glorified  being." — The  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast-  Table. 

"  The  island  is  where  ?  No  matter.  It  is  the  most  splendid 
domain  that  any  man  looks  upon  in  _these  latitudes.  Blue  sea 


HOLMES  857 

around  it  and  running  up  into  its  heart,  so  that  the  little  boat 
slumbers  like  a  baby  in  lap,  while  the  tall  ships  are  stripping 
naked  to  fight  the  hurricane  outside,  and  storm  stay-sails  bang- 
ing and  flying  in  ribbons.  Trees,  in  stretches  of  miles  ;  beeches, 
oaks,  most  numerous  ; — many  of  them  hung  with  moss,  looking 
like  bearded  Druids  ;  some  coiled  in  the  grasp  of  huge,  dark- 
stemmed  grape-vines.  Open  patches  where  the  sun  gets  in  and 
goes  to  sleep,  and  the  winds  come  so  finely  sifted  that  they  are  as 
soft  as  swan's  down." — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

10.  Sincerity  —  Honesty  —  Manliness.  — Although 
many  of  his  victims,  theological  and  medical,  have  writhed 
under  the  poet's  castigations,  all  admit  his  honesty  of  purpose 
and  his  entire  freedom  from  that  morbidness  and  sentimental- 
ity that  sometimes  mar  the  work  of  otherwise  great  writers. 
From  the  critic  of  Holmes's  first  volume,  who  declares  that 
"  there  is  not  a  particle  of  humbug  in  him,"  to  that  reviewer, 
writing  after  the  poet's  death,  who  wishes  for  a  list  of  "the 
men  now  in  middle  age  whose  mental  tone  has  been,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  considerably  influenced  by  the 
kindly  castigation,  until  they  seem  intolerable  of  shams  and 
half-baked  pretences  that  otherwise  they  might  have  gone  on 
tolerating," — through  all  those  fifty  years  the  Autocrat  ever 
spoke  in  what  Bayard  Taylor  fitly  calls  "that  freshness 
and  heartiness  of  tone  which  springs  from  a  fountain  lower 
than  the  brain." 

"  He  is  fresh  and  manly  even  when  he  securely  treads  the 
scarcely  marked  line  which  separates  sentiment  from  senti- 
mentality. .  .  .  He  valorously  invites  and  courts  the 
malicious  sharpness  of  the  most  unfriendly  criticism.  By  thus 
daring,  provoking,  and  defying  opposition  both  to  his  pro- 
fessional and  literary  reputation,  he  seems  to  us  to  indicate  a 
real  if  somewhat  impatient  love  of  truth.  .  .  .  Nobody 
can  justly  appreciate  Holmes  who  does  not  perceive  an  im- 
personal earnestness  and  insight  beneath  the  play  of  his  pro- 
voking personal  wit.  .  .  .  Even  his  petulances  of  sar- 


858  HOLMES 

casm  are  but  eccentric  utterances  of  a  love  of  truth  which 
has  its  source  in  the  deepest  and  gravest  sentiments  of  his 
nature."— ,£.  P.  Wtiipple. 

"  [His]  metrical  dedications  offered  to  his  brothers  of  the 
medical  craft  .  .  .  [are]  bristling  with  scorn  of  quackery 
and  challenge  to  opposing  systems." — E.  C.  Stedman. 

"  He  prefers  a  brown-stone  mansion  to  a  cabin  in  the 
woods.  .  .  .  He  is  a  hater  of  vulgarity  and  pretension 
and  of  quacks,  literary  and  other.  .  .  .  The  characters 
he  develops  are  not  all  separated "  into  heroes  and  villains, 
but  are  painted  as  they  are,  with  some  strain  of  good  in  the 
worst,  some  blemish  of  weakness,  or  perhaps  a  stain  of  guilt, 
in  the  best.  .  .  .  He  has  no  '  sentiment '  but  that  which 
is  in  harmony  with  intellectual  health  and  cheerful  temper." 
— F.  H.  Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  When  one  of  us  who  has  been  led  by  native  vanity  or  sense- 
less flattery  to  think  himself  or  herself  possessed  of  talent  arrives 
at  the  full  and  final  conclusion  that  he  or  she  is  really  dull,  it  is 
one  of  the  most  tranquillizing  and  blessed  convictions  that  can 
enter  a  mortal  mind.  .  .  .  How  sweetly  and  honestly  one 
said  to  me  the  other  day,  '  I  hate  books  ! '  A  gentleman,  singu- 
larly free  from  affectations, — not  learned,  of  course,  but  of  per- 
fect breeding,  which  is  often  so  much  better  than  learning. 
.  .  .  I  did  not  recognize  in  him  inferiority  of  literary  taste 
half  so  distinctly  as  I  did  simplicity  of  character  and  fearless 
acknowledgment  of  his  inaptitude  for  scholarship.  In  fact,  I 
think  there  are  a  great  many  gentlemen  and  others,  who  read 
with  a  mark  to  keep  their  place,  that  really  '  hate  books,'  but 
never  had  the  wit  to  find  it  out.'' — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast- 
Table. 

"  Unfortunately  there  has  been  a  very  great  tendency  to  make 
capital  of  various  kinds  out  of  dying  men's  speeches.  The  lies 
that  have  been  put  into  their  mouths  for  this  purpose  are  endless. 
The  prime  minister,  whose  last  breath  was  spent  in  scolding  his 
nurse,  dies  with  a  magnificent  apothegm  upon  his  lips, — manu- 


HOLMES  859 

factured  by  a  reporter.  Addison  gets  up  a  tableau  and  utters 
an  admirable  sentiment, — or  somebody  makes  the  posthumous 
dying  epigram  for  him.  The  incoherent  babble  of  green  fields 
is  translated  into  the  language  of  stately  sentiment.  One  would 
think  all  that  dying  men  had  to  do  was  to  say  the  prettiest  thing 
they  could, — to  make  their  rhetorical  point, — and  then  bow 
themselves  politely  out  of  the  world." — The  Professor  at  the 
Breakfast-  Table. 

"  '  I  wish  I  were  half  as  good  as  many  heathens  have  been,'  I 
said, — '  Dying  for  a  principle  seems  to  me  a  higher  degree  of 
virtue  than  scolding  for  it ;  and  the  history  of  heathen  races  is 
full  of  instances  where  men  have  laid  down  their  lives  for  the 
love  of  their  kind,  of  their  country,  of  truth,  nay,  even  for  simple 
manhood's  sake  or  to  show  their  obedience  or  fidelity."  What 
would  not  such  beings  have  done  for  the  souls  of  men,  for  the 
Christian  commonwealth,  for  the  King  of  Kings,  if  they  had 
lived  in  days  of  larger  light  ?  Which  seems  to  you  nearest 
heaven,  Socrates  drinking  his  hemlock,  Regulus  going  back  to 
the  enemy's  camp,  or  that  old  New  England  divine  sitting  com- 
fortably in  his  study  and  chuckling  over  his  conceit  of  certain 
poor  women,  who  had  been  burned  to  death  in  his  own  town, 
going  '  roaring  out  of  one  fire  into  another  ?  '  " —  The  Professor  at 
the  Breakfast-Table. 

ii.  Earnestness — Serious  Purpose. — Those  who 
estimate  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  merely  as  a  wit  come  far 
short  of  a  true  conception  of  the  man  and  of  his  genius.  He 
was  by  no  means  unaware  of  the  risk  he  ran  of  being  miscon- 
strued by  that  very  large  and  highly  respectable  race  of 
critics  and  readers  who  mistake  dull  sobriety  for  wisdom,  and 
confound  wit  with  buffoonery.  In  one  of  his  anniversary 
poems,  written  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  literary  career,  he 
says  to  the  friends  who  have  urged  him  to  lend  his  song  to 
their  merriment : 

"  Besides,  my  prospects — don't  you  know  that  people  won't  employ 
A  man  that  wrongs  his  manliness  by  laughing  like  a  boy, 
And  suspect  the  azure  blossom  that  unfolds  upon  a  shoot, 
As  if  wisdom's  old  potato  could  not  flourish  at  its  .root  ?  " 


860  HOLMES 

"Beneath  the  brilliant  fancy  and  sparkle  which  play  on 
the  surface  of  his  nature  there  runs  a  deep,  strong  current  of 
serious  and  earnest  thought  and  feeling,  which  moves  him,  at 
fit  times,  to  strike  the  graver  and  richer  chords  which  pro- 
foundly move  the  soul  in  its  higher  moods." — Ray  Palmer. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  I  have  a  creed, — I  replied, — none  better  and  none  shorter. 
It  is  told  in  two  words, — the  two  first  of  the  Paternoster.  And 
when  I  say  these  works  I  mean  them." — The  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast-  Table. 

"  Well,  I  can't  be  savage  with  you  for  wanting  to  laugh,  and 
I  like  to  make  you  laugh,  well  enough,  when  I  can.  But  then 
observe  this  :  if  the  sense  of  the  ridiculous  is  one  side  of  an  im- 
pressible nature,  it  is  very  well  ;  but  if  that  is  all  there  is  in  a 
man,  he  had  better  have  been  an  ape  at  once,  and  so  have  stood 
at  the  head  of  his  profession." — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast- 
Table. 

"  I  do  not  advise  you,  young  man,  even  if  my  illustration  strike 
your  fancy,  to  consecrate  the  flower  of  your  life  to  painting  the 
bowl  of  a  pipe  ;  for,  let  me  assure  you,  the  stain  of  a  reverie- 
breeding  narcotic  may  strike  deeper  than  you  think  for.  I  have 
seen  the  green  leaf  of  early  promise  grow  brown  before  its  time 
under  such  Nicotian  regimen,  and  thought  the  umbered  meer- 
schaum was  dearly  bought  at  the  cost  of  a  brain  enfeebled  and  a 
will  enslaved." — The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table. 

12.  Localism — Sectionalism. — Few  writers  have  been 
so  devotedly  attached  to  a  locality,  and  few  volumes  are  so 
tinged  with  localisms  as  are  those  of  Holmes. 

"  [He  has]  an  intense  and  perpetual  localism.  ...  In 
their  [his  novels]  freshness,  alertness,  and  brilliancy  of  delinea- 
tion, [they]  are  thoroughly  of  New  England  ;  they  could  not 
have  been  written  in  another  land." — C.  F.  Richardson. 

"  [He  is]  an  essential  part  of  Boston,  like  the  crier  who 
becomes  so  identified  with  a  court  that  it  seems  as  if  Justice 
must  change  her  quarters  when  he  is  gone." — E.  C.  Stedman. 


HOLMES  86l 

"Fairly  Boston's  laureate.  ...  He  believed  in  Eos- 
ton  as  Johnson  did  in  London." — F,  H.  Underwood. 

"  When  it  was  known  that  he  was  dead,  men  felt,  despite 
his  age,  as  if  there,  where  he  was  best  known,  his  going  made 
a  gap  in  nature,  and  took  from  them  something  which  was  as 
much  a  part  of  their  being  as  the  air  they  breathed.  Dr. 
Holmes  had  one  personal  quality  which  ought  not  to  be 
passed  over  without  mention  anywhere  or  at  any  time.  He 
was  a  thorough  American  and  always  a  patriot,  always  national 
and  independent,  and  never  colonial  or  subservient  to  foreign 
opinion.  In  the  war  of  the  rebellion  none  was  a  stronger  up- 
holder of  the  national  cause  than  he.  In  his  earliest  verse  we 
catch  constantly  the  flutter  of  the  flag,  and  in  his  war  poems 
we  feel  the  rush  and  life  of  the  great  uprising  which  saved  the 
nation.  He  was  in  the  best  sense  a  citizen  of  the  world,  of 
broad  and  catholic  sympathies.  But  he  was  first  and  before 
that  an  American  citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  this  fact 
is  at  once  proof  and  reason  that  he  was  able  to  do  work 
which  has  carried  delight  to  many  people  of  many  tongues, 
and  which  has  won  him  a  high  and  lasting  place  in  the  great 
literature  of  the  English-speaking  people." — Henry  Cabot 
Lodge. 

"  The  streets  of  London  were  not  more  loved  by  Johnson 
and  Lamb  than  those  of  Boston  have  been  by  Holmes.  .  .  . 
He  has  made  only  short  swallow-flights  beyond  the  limits  of 
his  own  beloved  city.  If  he  goes  to  Paris,  he  carries  Boston 
with  him.  ...  A  barnacle  is  not  more  closely  identified 
with  its  rock  or  a  pearl  with  its  oyster  than,  Holmes  with 
St.  Botolph's  town.  All  his  books  might  be  labelled,  '  Talks 
with  my  neighbors.'  He  is  indigenous ;  throws  up  New 
England  subsoil  as  he  ploughs  ;  his  homespun  characters  speak 
the  native  patois,  and  the  whole  tone  of  his  writings  is  unaf- 
fectedly Yankee." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 


862  HOLMES 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  Boston  is  just  like  other  places  of  its  size  ; — only  perhaps, 
considering  its  excellent  fish-market,  paid  fire  department, 
superior  monthly  publications,  and  correct  habit  of  spelling  the 
English  language,  it  has  some  right  to  look  down  on  the  mob  of 
cities.  I'll  tell  you,  though,  if  you  want  to  know  it,  what  is  the 
real  offense  of  Boston.  It  drains  a  large  water-shed  of  its  intellect, 
and  will  not  of  itself  be  drained.  .  .  .  There  can  never  be  a 
real  metropolis  in  this  country  until  the  biggest  centre  can  drain 
the  lesser  ones  of  their  talent  and  wealth.'' — The  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast-  Table. 

" — Full  of  crooked  little  streets;  but  I  tell  you  Boston  has 
opened,  and  kept  open,  more  turnpikes  that  lead  to  free  thought 
and  free  speech  and  free  deeds  than  any  other  city  of  live  men  or 
dead  men, — I  don't  care  how  broad  their  streets  are,  nor  how  high 
their  steeples !  " —  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast-  Table.  [See  also 
the  first  illustration  under  Humor  and  the  fourth  under  Pathos.] 

13.  Graceful  Philosophy — Ingenious  Speculation. 
— "  Dr.  Holmes's  whole  work,  in  reality,  has  been  to  present 
in  a  graceful,  able,  and  amusing  way  philosophy  not  tran- 
scending the  bounds  of  the  ordinarily  intelligent  mind,  psy- 
chology which,  however  just  and  acute,  is  never  especially 
profound,  and  objective  observation  wonderfully  vivid  and 
gay,  but  on  the  whole  somewhat  slight." — An  English  Critic. 

"  [Dr.  Holmes  has  been  fond  of  exploring]  that  weird 
borderland  between  science  and  speculation  where  psychology 
and  physiology  exercise  mixed  jurisdiction." — Lowell. 

"A  kind  of  attenuated  Franklin,  who  views  things  and 
folks  with  the  less  robustness  but  keener  distinction  and  in- 
sight. .  .  .  Somewhat  distrustful  of  the  'inner  light,' 
he  stands  squarely  upon  observation,  experience,  induction  ; 
yet  at  times  is  so  volatile  a  theorist  that  one  asks  how  much  of 
his  raging  is  conviction  and  how  much  mirth  and  whim."  — 
E.  C.  Stedntan. 

"  His  two  novels  are  not  so  much  "novels  of  plot  as  they  are 


HOLMES  863 

stories  written  to  illustrate  a  psychological  theory  of  hered- 
ity. The  strength  of 'Elsie  Venner' and  the  'Guardian  Angel' 
lies  in  their  shrewd  psychological  analysis  of  character  and 
in  the  wealth  of  practical  philosophy." — W.  S.  Kennedy. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"  There  may  be  a  physical  reason  for  the  strange  connection 
between  the  sense  of  smell  and  the  mind.  The  olfactory  nerve 
— so  my  friend  the  professor  tells  me — is  the  only  one  directly 
connected  with  the  hemispheres  of  the  brain,  the  parts  in  which, 
as  we  have  every  reason  to  believe,  the  intellectual  processes 
are  performed.  .  .  .  Contrast  the  sense  of  taste,  as  a  source 
of  suggestive  impressions,  with  that  of  smell." — The  Autocrat  of 
the  Breakfast-  Table. 

"  Some  persons  seem  to  think  that  absolute  truth,  in  the  form 
of  rigidly  stated  propositions,  is  all  that  conversation  admits. 
This  is  precisely  as  if  a  musician  should  insist  on  having  nothing 
but  perfect  chords  and  simple  melodies, — no  diminished  fifths, 
no  flat  sevenths,  no  flourishes  on  any  account.  Now  it  is  fair  to 
say  that,  just  as  music  must  have  all  these,  so  conversation  must 
have  its  partial  truths,  its  embellished  truths,  its  exaggerated 
truths.  It  is  in  its  higher  forms  an  artistic  product,  and  admits 
the  ideal  element  as  much  as  pictures  or  statues.  One  man  who 
is  a  little  too  literal  can  spoil  the  talk  of  a  whole  tableful  of  men 
of  esprit" —  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-  Table. 

"  Scientific  knowledge,  even  in  the  most  modest  persons,  has 
mingled  with  it  a  something  which  partakes  of  insolence.  Abso- 
lute, preemptory  facts  are  bullies,  and  those  who  keep  company 
with  them  are  apt  to  get  a  bullying  habit  of  mind, — not  of  man- 
ners, perhaps.  .  .  .  Take  the  man,  for  instance,  who  deals  in 
the  mathematical  sciences.  There  is  no  elasticity  in  a  mathemat- 
ical fact ;  everything  must  go  to  pieces  that  comes  in  collision 
with  it.  ...  Every  probability — and  most  of  our  common, 
working  beliefs  are  probabilities — is  provided  with  buffers  at 
both  ends  which  break  the  force  of  opposite  opinions  clashing 
against  it,  but  scientific  certainty  has  no  spring  in  it,  no  courtesy, 
no  possibility  of  yielding.  All  this  must  react  on  the  minds  which 
handle  these  forms  of  truth."—  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast- 
Table. 


INDEX 


ABBOT,  E.  A.,  quoted,  16 

"  Abolishment  of  Christianity,  The," 
quoted,  182 

"A  Christmas  Carol,"  quoted,  627, 
628,  631,  633,  640 

''  Adam  Bede,"  quoted,  579,  580,  581, 
585,  587-  593,  597.  601,  602 

Addison,  biographical  outline  of,  82- 
87  ;  bibliography  on,  87-88  ;  con- 
ventionality of,  no;  delicate  liu- 
mor  of,  102  ;  elegance  of,  88  ;  ele- 
vation of,  95  ;  fastidiousness  of, 
113;  formalism  of,  no;  high  pur- 
pose of,  95  ;  humor  of,  102  ;  keen 
satire  of,  92 

Addison,  Macaulay's  Essay  on, 
quoted;  441,  443,  447  ;  moral  eleva- 
tion of,  95  ;  portraiture,  his  skill 
in,  105;  precision,  his  verbal,  113; 
quoted  as  critic,  31,  93  ;  urbanity 
of,  88  ;  verbal  precision  of,  1 13 

"Advancement  of  Learning,  The," 
quoted,  10,  13,  15,  18,  19 

Ad-'tnture,  The,  quoted,  267 

"  Adventures  of  Philip,"  quoted,  485 

''  Adventures  of  a  Strolling  Piper," 
quoted,  228 

11  Affliction,"  Newman's  Sermon  on, 
quoted,  496 

"  Age,"  Bacon's  Essay  on,  quoted,  9 

"  A  Good  Word  for  Winter,"  quoted, 
8n,  822,  824,  832,  833,  835 

"Agriculture,  Thoughts  on,"  quoted, 
281 

Aiken,  J.,  quoted,  102 

Ainger,~A.,  quoted,  334,  337,  346,  348, 

351 

Aitken,  G.  A. ,  quoted,  135,  139 
Alcott,  B. ,  quoted,  780.  794 
"Alhambra,  The,"  quoted,  723,  724 
"All  Fools'  Day,"  quoted,  340,  342 
"American      Note-Book,"      Haw- 
thorne's, quoted,  759 
"A  Modest   Proposal,"  etc.,    Swift, 

quoted,  182 

"Amos  Barton, "quoted, 584, 587, 604 
"Ancient     Medals,"     Addison     on, 
quoted,  113 


Anderson,  W. ,  quoted,  73 

"Anglo-American  Church,  The," 
Newman  on,  quoted,  502 

"  Animadversions,"  etc.,  Milton's, 
quoted,  32,  38 

"  Apologia,"  Newman's,  quoted, 
497 

"Apology  for  Smectymnuus,"  Mil- 
ton's, quoted,  39 

''  A  Pretended  Letter,"  Swift's,  quot- 
ed, 186 

"  Areopagitica,"  quoted,  33,  37,  44 

Arnold,  acumen,  his  critical,  509 ; 
bibliography  on,  508-509  ;  biogra- 
phy of  507-508  ;  classic  finish  of, 
522  ;  clearness  of,  522  ;  cool,  sting- 
ing satire  of,  520 ;  critical  acumen 
of,  509 ;  deep  moral  sympathy,  his 
lack  of,  515  ;  despondency  of,  517  ; 
doubt  of,  515  ;  finish,  his  classic, 
522  ;  insight,  his  literary,  509  ;  in- 
tellectuality of,  511 ;  intellectual 
superciliousness  of,  519;  literary 
insight  of,  509  ;  lack  of  deep  moral 
sympathy,  his,  515  ;  melancholy  of, 
517;  moral  superciliousness  of,  519; 
moral  sympathy,  his  lack  of.  515  ; 
phrases,  his  stock,  513 ;  purity  of, 
522  ;  quoted  as  critic,  40,  257,  271, 
277,  5.17.  549,  778,  789.  792,  798  I 
repetition  of,  513  ;  satire,  his  cool, 
520  ;  stinging  satire  of,  520 ;  stock 
phrases  of,  513  ;  suggestiveness  of, 
511 ;  superciliousness  of,  519  ; 
sympathy,  his  lack  of,  515 

Arnold,  A.  S. ,  quoted,  550 

Arnold,  Thomas,  quoted,  76 

"Art,"  Emerson  on,  794 

"  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities,"  quoted, 
617,  642 

Athenteum^  quoted,  470 

"At  Sea,"  quoted,  835 

"Autobiography,''  De  Quincey's, 
quoted,  401,  408,  415,  419 

"Autocrat  at  the  Breakfast  Table, 
The,"  quoted,  841.  842,  843,  844, 
845,  846,  848,  850,  852,  853,  855, 
856,  857,  858,  860,  862,  863 


865 


866 


INDEX 


BACON,  analysis  by,  10 ;  biographi- 
cal outline  of,  1-5  ;  bibliography 
on,  5  ;  characteristics  of,  7-19 ; 
biblical  quotation  by,  15  ;  classical 
quotation  by,  15  ;  conciseness  of, 
7  ;  elevation  (intellectual)  of,  18  ; 
eloquence  of,  17  ;  imagery  of,  n  ; 
knowledge  of  human  nature  of,  13  ; 
Latin  derivatives  used  by,  16  ;  ob- 
solete words  of,  16  ;  sagacity  of, 

13 
"  Bacon,"    Macaulay's     Essay    on, 

quoted,  427,  435,  437,  443 
Bagehot,  W.,  quoted,  46,  477,    620, 

625,  630 

'•  Barnaby  Rudge,"  quoted,  654 
Bartol,  C.  A.,  quoted,  792 
Barton,  B.,  quoted,  332 
Bascom,  J.,  quoted,  88,  96,  128,  132, 

140,  248 
"  Battle  of  the  Books,  The,"  quoted, 

192,  197 
Bayne,  Peter,  quoted,  34,  400,  407, 

408,  460,  478,  481,  488,  534,  536. 

539.  543,  659-  663.  665,  668,  671, 

678,  685 

"  Behavior,"  Emerson  on,  776 
Benson,  E.,  quoted,  765 
Besant,  Walter,  quoted,  277 
"  Bickerstaff,"    Steele    on,    quoted, 

130,  142 
Birrell,  A.,  quoted,  41,  43,   48,  246, 

257,  261,  266,  336,  341,  498,  502, 

5«>5,  514,  539.  543-  546,  560 
Black,    William,    quoted,   208,   212, 

218,  221,  223,  224,  226,  228,  233 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  quoted,  623 
Blair  quoted,  187 
"Bleak  House,"    quoted,  631,  639, 

645 

Blind,  M.,  quoted,  588 
"  Blithedale  Romance.The,"  quoted, 

761,  763,  765 
Bos  well,  quoted,  273 
Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  quoted, 

280 
Boswell's   "Life  of  Johnson,"   Car- 

lyle  on,  quoted,  535 
Boswell's  "Life  of  Johnson,"   Ma- 

caulay  on,  quoted,  447 
Bradfield,  F.,  quoted,  766 
Bremer,  F.,  quoted,  795 
Brimley,  G.,  quoted,  483 
Bristol,  Burke's  speech  at,  quoted, 

3H 

Bronte,  C. ,  quoted,  474 
Brooke,    Stopford.    quoted,  31,  39, 

475.  605.  679.  68 1 
Brougham,    quoted,    248,    249,    271, 

274 


Brown,  E    E.,  quoted,  826 

Brown,  John,  quoted,  65,  79,  81 

Brown,  J.  C. ,  quoted,  582 

Brown,  R.  C. ,  quoted,  343 

Brown,  S.  G.,  quoted,  417 

Browne,  M.,  quoted,  747 

Browning,  O.,  quoted,  588 

Bryant,  quoted,  705,  710,  712,  718 

Bulwer-Lytton,  quoted,  210,  223, 
229,  232,  350 

Bunyan,  biographical  outline  of,  50- 
54 ;  bibliography  on  style  of,  54- 
56  ;  biblical  coloring  of,  74  ;  char- 
acteristics of,  56-81  ;  catholicity  of, 
71 ;  common-sense  of,  71 ;  con- 
SCJQUS  inspiration,  80 ;  dramatic 
instinct  of,  78  ;  earnestness  of,  80  ; 
freshness  of,  56 ;  homeliness  of, 
68 ;  humor  of,  65 ;  imaginative 
power  of,  59 ;  inspiration  (con- 
scious) of,  80  ;  latent  satire  of,  65  ; 
naturalness  of,  62  ;  quiet  humor  of, 
66  ;  portraiture  of,  59  ;  realism  of, 
67 ;  satire  of,  65  ;  spirituality  of, 
74  ;  sympathy  of,  76 ;  tenderness 
of,  76  ;  terseness  of,  56 ;  vigor  of, 
56 

Burke,  ancient  institutions,  his  ven- 
eration for,  309 ;  apothegm  of,  368  ; 
biographical  outline  of,  282-289  ; 
bibliography  on  style  of,  289-291  ; 
catholicity  of,  312  ;  coarseness  of, 
299 ;  conservatism  of,  309  ;  didac- 
ticism of,  308  ;  elevation,  mental 
and  moral  of,  302  ;  eloquence  of, 
291  ;  erudition  of,  304  ;  excessive 
imagery  of,  295 ;  fondness  for 
qualification,  his,  314  ;  grandeur, 
his  Miltonic,  291  ;  imagery,  his 
excessive,  293 ;  imagination,  his 
vivid,  319  ;  impassioned  eloquence 
of.  291 ;  invective  of,  299  ;  institu- 
tions, his  fondness  for  ancient,  309  ; 
knowledge,  vast,  of,  304  ;  mental 
and  moral  elevation  of,  302  ;  Mil- 
tonic  grandeur  of,  291 ;  pathos,  his 
stern,  317 ;  profuse  imagery  of, 
295  ;  qualification,  his  fondness  for, 
314 ;  rapidity  of,  321  ;  ridicule  of, 
299  ;  stern  pathos  of,  317  ;  tolera- 
tion of,  312  ;  use  of  apothegm,  his, 
368 ;  veneration,  his,  for  ancient 
institutions,  308 ;  vivid  imagina- 
tion of,  319 

Burns,  Carlyle's  Essay  on,  quoted, 
537 

Burroughs,  J.,  quoted,  510,  512,  515, 
522,  538,  540,  548,  552,  557,  561, 
774,  777.  782,  785,  789,  793 

Burton,  quoted,  419 


INDEX 


867 


,    De    Quincey's    Essay    on, 
quoted,  398,  411 

Caird,  E. ,  quoted,  563 

"  Callista's  Vision,"  quoted,  501 

Campbell,  Thomas,  quoted,  221,  232 

"Captain  Carleton,  Memoirs  of," 
quoted,  160,  162 

Canning,  A.  S.  G. ,  quoted,  366,  369 

Carlyle,  absurd  incongruity,  his  por- 
trayal of,  545  ;  apostrophe  of,  566  ; 
bibliography  on  style  of,  528-532  ; 
biographical  outline  of,  524-528 ; 
broad  sarcasm  of,  537 ;  chaotic 
sentence,  structure  of,  552  ;  charac- 
terization, his  minute,  541 ;  coin- 
age, free  of,  532  ;  contemptuous 
familiarity  of,  540  ;  despair  of,  555  ; 
dramatic  power  of,  563  ;  earnest- 
ness of,  547 ;  eccentricities,  his 
verbal,  532 ;  effective  pathos  of, 
567  ;  exaltation  of  the  individual, 
his,  559  ;  excessive  ridicule  of,  537  ; 
exclamation,  his  fondness  for,  566  ; 
extravagant  humor  of,  545 ;  fa- 
miliarity of,  540;  free  coinage  of, 
532 ;  gloominess  of,  555 ;  hero- 
worship  of,  559  ;  humor,  his  extrav 
agant,  555  ;  imagery,  his  profuse, 
535  ;  incongruity,  his  portrayal  of, 
545  ;  individualization  of,  541  ;  in- 
dividual, his  exaltation  of  the,  559  ; 
interrogation,  his  fondness  for,  566 ; 
lamentation  of,  555  ;  minute  char- 
acterization of,  541  ;  nicknames, 
his  use  of,  540 ;  portraiture,  his 
skill  in,  563  ;  power,  his  dramatic, 
563 ;  profuse  imagery  of,  535 ; 
quoted,  as  critic,  44,  244,  252,  253, 
256,  263,  264,  269,  276,  371,  402, 
470,  634,  668  ;  rare  but  effective 
pathos  of,  567  ;  ridicule,  his  ex- 
cessive, 537 ;  rugged  sincerity  of, 
547  ;  sarcasm,  his  broad,  537  ;  sen- 
tence structure,  his  chaotic,  552  ; 
sincerity,  his  rugged,  547  ;  struct- 
ure, chaotic,  of  his  sentences,  552  ; 
skill,  his,  in  portraiture,  563;  verbal 
eccentricities  of,  532  ;  vividness  of, 
563  ;  worship,  his,  of  heroes,  559 

Gary,  quoted,  271 

"Catholicism  in  England,"  New- 
man on,  quoted,  506 

Chadwick,  J.  W.,  quoted,  841,  851 

Chalmers,  Dr.,  quoted,  216 

Chambers,  quoted,  624 

Channing,  W.  E. ,  quoted,  36,  49, 
I2i,  124,  136,  141,  209,  212,  221, 
232 

"  Character,"  Emerson  on,  783,  790, 
797 


Cheever,  G.  B.,  quoted,  57,   60,  68, 

72.  74 
Cheney,  ].  V.,  quoted,  509,513,518, 

744 

Child,  L.  M.,  quoted,  617 
"  Child  Angel,  The,"  quoted,  349 
"Children,"     Bacon's     Essay     on, 

quoted,  9 
"  Chimney  Sweepers, The  Praise  of," 

quoted,  337 
"  Christianity,"  De  Quincey's  Essay 

on,  quoted,  404,  416 
Christian  Examiner,  quoted,  416 
"  Christian  Justice,"  quoted,  666 
Church,  R.  W.,  quoted,  8,  n 
"  Citizen  of  the  World,  A,"  quoted, 

222,  224,  227,  229 
Clive,  Lord,  Macaulay  on,  quoted, 

445 
Coleridge,  Lamb's  Letter  to,  quoted, 

345 

Coleridge,  quoted,  64,  126,  343 
Collier,  W.    F.,  quoted,  12,  69,  128, 

138,  252,   266,   371,   538,  549,  552, 

614,  625 

11  Compensation,"  Emerson  on,  798 
"  Conciliation  with  America*''  Burke 

on,  quoted,  309,  314 
"  Conduct    of    the      Allies,    The," 

quoted,  184,  186 

•'  Conduct  of  Life,"  quoted,  672 
Cone,  H.  M.,  quoted,  843 
"Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eater," 

quoted.  399,  401,  403,  406,  407,  410, 

413 

"  Conquest  of  Granada,"  quoted, 
716 

Cooke,  G.  W.,  quoted,  576,  580,  589, 
591,  594.  598,  602,  603.  606,  663, 
665,  671,  675,  677,  682,  686,  687, 
690,  792 

Courthope,  W.  J.,  quoted,  94,  98, 
104,  108,  112,  114,  127,  257,  266 

Craik,  G.  L.,  12,  155,  158,  165,  180, 
183, 185,  187,  189,  192,  194,254,  260, 
276 

"  Crests,"  Ruskin  on,  quoted,  683 

Croker,  J.  M.,  quoted,  644 

Cromwell,  Carlyle's  Essay  on,  quot- 
ed, 537,  569 

"Culture  and  Anarchy,  quoted, 
512,  513,  520.  521 

Cunningham,  A.,  quoted,  350 

Curtis,  G.  W.,  quoted,  342,  703,  711, 
723,  735,  74i-  747,  750,  754,  755, 
764,  813,  815,  823,  825,  833,  843, 

855 

DANA,  R.  H.,  quoted,  701,  716 
"  Daniel  Deronda,"  quoted,  603 


868 


INDEX 


Davey,  S.,  quoted,  400,  407,  411,  412, 

417,  545.  548,  568,  632,  640,  646 
"  David  Copperfield,"  quoted,  617 
"  David  Swan,"  quoted,  744 
Dawson,  G.,  quoted,  41,  49,  58,  60, 
64,  70,  77,  165,  209,   212,  215,  225, 
231,   257,  266,  271,   277,  336,  341, 
462,   511,   515,  517,  521,  523,  533, 

553.  56o.  564,  593 

Dawson,  W.  J.,  quoted,  378,  384 

"  Dead  Folk.  '  Steele  on,  quoted, 
129 

"  Decay  of  Beggars,  The,"  quoted, 
336.  339 

11  Defense  of  the  English  People," 
quoted,  35,  39,  44,  49 

Defoe,  biography  of,  143-150  ;  bibli- 
ography on,  150-152  ;  description, 
his  graphic,  166  ;  didacticism  of, 
161  ;  graphic  description  of,  166  ; 
homeliness  of,  154  ;  independence 
of,  165  ;  minuteness  of,  152  ;  moral 
aim  of,  161 ;  realism  of,  156 ;  sa- 
gacity of,  163 ;  sarcasm  of,  160  ; 
sincerity  of,  165  ;  undisguised  sar- 
casm of,  160 ;  verisimilitude  of, 
156  ;  worldly  wisdom  of,  163. 

Demosthenes,  De  Quincey's  Essay 
on,  quoted,  400 

Dennett,  J.  R.,  quoted,  752 

Dennis,  J.,  quoted,  155,  161,  366, 
369,  374,  386.  387 

De  Quincey,  affected  familiarity  of, 
410  ;  biographical  outline  of,  353- 
361 ;  bibliography  on  the  style  of, 
361-364 ;  character,  his  insight 
into,  418  ;  digression,  his  inveter- 
ate, 399  ;  excessive  qualification  of, 
397  ;  erudition  of,  408  ;  extensive 
range  of,  408 ;  faith,  his  profound 
religious,  415;  familiarity  of,  410; 
forced  homeliness  of,  410 ;  gro- 
tesque humor  of,  412 ;  inveterate 
digression  of,  399  ;  homeliness  of, 
410  ;  humor,  his  grotesque,  412  ; 
independence  of,  417  ;  insight,  his, 
into  character,  418  ;  mysterious,  his 
sense  of  the,  406;  originality  of,  417; 
perception,  his,  of  resemblances, 
414 ;  precision,  his  scrupulous, 
401  ;  playful  humor  of,  412  ;  pro- 
found religious  faith  of,  415  ;  qual- 
ification, his  excessive,  397  ;  quoted 
as  critic,  in,  207,  213,  215,  217, 
224.  337.  340,  343.  348,  400,  402, 
405,  414,  519;  range,  his  exten- 
sive, 408  ;  religious  faith  of,  415  ; 
resemblances,  his  perception  of, 
414 ;  reverence  of,  415  ;  rhythm, 
his  stately,  404  ;  scrupulous  pre- 


cision of,  401  ;  sense,  his,  of  the 
mysterious,  406 ;  slang  of,  410 ; 
stately  rhythm  of,  404  ;  subtlety 
of,  397;  suspense,  his  excessive, 

397 

"  Deserted  Village,  The,"  quoted, 
229 

Devey,  J.,  quoted,  366,  372,  374,  379, 
383,  384.  386,  388 

"  Diamond  Necklace,  The,'1  quoted, 
540,  541,  567 

Dickens,  animal  spirits  of,  631  ;  arti- 
ficiality of,  643  ;  bibliography  on 
his  style,  609 ;  biographical  outline 
of,  607  ;  broad  sympathy  of,  635  ; 
caricature,  his  fondness  for,  613  ; 
characteristics,  his  incarnation  of, 
620 ;  descriptive  power  of,  624  ; 
diffuseness  of,  646  ;  dramatic  pow- 
er of,  640 ;  earnestness  of,  634  ; 
exaggeration  of,  613  ;  fellowship, 
his  good,  631  ;  fondness,  his,  for 
caricature,  613  ;  gayety  of,  631  ; 
genial  humor  of,  617  ;  good-fellow- 
ship of,  631  ;  grotesqueness  of,  613; 
humanity,  his  practical,  635  ;  hu- 
mor, his  genial,  617  ;  incarnation 
of  characteristics  by,  620  ;  manli- 
ness of,  634 ;  mawkish  pathos  of, 
628  ;  minuteness  of,  624  ;  observa- 
tion, his  power  of,  624  ;  pathos  of, 
628  ;  power,  his  descriptive,  624  ; 
power,  his  dramatic,  640  ;  practical 
humanity  of,  635  ;  quoted  as  critic, 
604,  616,  638 ;  sincerity  of,  634 ; 
single  strokes  of,  620  ;  spirits,  his 
animal,  631  ;  strokes,  his  single, 
620  ;  sympathy,  his  broad,  635  ; 
tender  pathos  of,  628  ;  vividness 
of.  624  ;  vulgarity,  his  alleged,  643 

''Discipline,"  Newman  on,  quoted, 
498 

"  Discourses  in  America,"  Arnold's, 
quoted,  519 

Disraeli,  I.,  quoted,  n 

"  Divorce,''  Milton  on,   quoted,  32, 

35,  37.  44 
Dobson,  A.,  quoted,   126,   129,  134, 

223,  231 
"  Doing  as  One  Likes,"  Arnold  on, 

quoted,  515 
Dolby,  quoted,  632 
"  Dombey  and  Son,''  quoted,   635, 

647 
Dowden,  E. ,    quoted,   228,  350,  583, 

592,594-  599.  722,  774 
Drake.  N. ,  quoted,  133,  135 
Drake,  S.  A.,  quoted,  764 
•'  Drapier's  Letters,   The,"  quoted, 

1 84,- 1 90 


INDEX 


869 


"  Dryden,1'  Lowell  on,  831 
Dulcken,  quoted,  373 

"  EARS,  A  Chapter  on,"  quoted,  344, 

347 

Edinburgh  Review,  quoted,  472,  475, 
624 

11  Education  of  Ladies,"  Swift  on, 
quoted,  198 

"Edwin  Drood,1'  quoted,  620 

Eliot,  George,  analysis  of  character, 
her  psychological,  575  ;  artistic  use 
of  dialect,  her,  601 ;  bibliography 
on  the  style  of,  572-575  ;  biograph- 
ical outline  of,  570-572 ;  broad 
sympathy  of,  581  ;  character,  her 
psychological  analysis  of,  575 ; 
contemplative  humor  of,  590  ;  deep 
religious  feeling  of,  597  ;  delicate 
pathos  of,  674  ;  depreciation  of  in- 
dividualism by,  605  ;  despair  of, 
593  ;  description  of  rural  life  by, 
599 ;  dialect,  her  artistic  use  of, 
601  ;  erudition,  her  wide,  587 ; 
feeling,  her  deep  religious,  597  ; 
homely  types,  her  preference  for, 
579  ;  humor,  her  quiet,  590  ;  im- 
agery, her  scientific,  587  ;  individ- 
ualism, her  depreciation  of,  605  ; 
labored  satire  of,  602  ;  melancholy 
of,  593;  moral  purpose  of,  597; 
occasional  pedantry  of,  587  ;  pa- 
thos, her  delicate,  604  ;  pedantry, 
her  occasional,  587  ;  pessimism  of, 
593  ;  picturesque  description  by, 
599;  portraiture,  her  power  of,  585; 
power  of  portraiture  of,  585  ;  pref- 
erence for  homely  types  by,  579  ; 
psychological  analysis  by,  575 ; 
purpose,  her  deep  moral,  597 ; 
quiet  humor  of,  590;  range  of, 
585  ;  religious  feeling  of,  597  ;  ru- 
ral life,  her  description  of,  599 ; 
sarcasm  of,  602  ;  satire,  her  la- 
bored, 602  ;  scenery,  her  descrip- 
tion of  rural,  599  ;  scientific  imag- 
ery of,  587  ;  sympathy,  her  broad, 
581  ;  tolerance  of,  581 ;  types,  her 
preference  for  homely,  579  ;  useoi 
dialect  by,  601  ;  wide  erudition  of, 

587 

"  Emancipation  Address,"  Emer- 
son's, quoted,  794 

Emerson,  aphorism  of,  774  ;  beauty, 
his  sense  of,  786  ;  bibliography  on 
style  of,  772-774 ;  biographical  out- 
line of,  768-772  ;  courtliness  of,  795; 
dignity  of,  795  ;  dignified  irony  of, 
795;  epigram  of,  774;  gravity  of, 
795  ;  idealism  of,  794  ;  imagery, 


his  poetic,  786 ;  independence  of, 
784  ;  individuality  of,  784  ;  intro- 
spection of,  787  ;  irony,  his  digni- 
fied, 797 ;  logical  sequence,  his 
lack  of,  777  ;  lack  of  logical  se- 
quence, his,  777  ;  mysticism  of, 
781  ;  optimism  of,  791  ;  originality 
of,  784 ;  poetic  imagery  of,  786 ; 
quoted  as  critic,  538,  543,  546,  549, 
553-  557.  559,  789 ;  sequence,  his 
lack  of,  777  ;  sense  ot  beauty  of, 
786  ;  sincerity  of,  7^,0 ;  subjective- 
ness  of,  781  ;  suggestiveness  of, 
789  ;  terseness  of,  774 

"  Empedocles  on  .-Etna,1'  quoted, 
517.  Si8 

"Employment  of  Authors,"  quoted, 
275 

"  English  Humorists,  The,"  quoted, 
471 

''  English  Note-Book,"  Hawthorne's, 
quoted,  756 

"English  Writers  on  America," 
quoted,  702 

"  Envy,"  Bacon's  Essay  on,  quoted, 
10,  13,  15,  16 

Escott,  T.  H.  S.,  quoted,  453 

Essays,  Goldsmith's,  quoted,  213, 
216,  224,  226 

Essays,  De  Quincey's,  quoted,  403, 

415 
"  Essays    in    Criticism,"    Arnold's, 

quoted,  510,  511,  514,  520,  521 
Essenes,  De  Quincey's  Essay  on  the, 

quoted,  411 
Eternity,  De  Quincey  on,  quoted, 

415 
"Everybody's    Business,"    quoted, 

156  ' 
Everett,  E.,  quoted,  706,  718 

"  FALLACY,   OF  THE   PATHETIC," 

quoted,  679 

"  Fancy's  Show-Box,"  quoted,  743 
"  Farming."  Emerson  on,  797 
"  Felix  Holt,"  quoted,  587,  601,  602 
Felton,  C.  C. ,  quoted,  347 
Fields,  J.  S. ,  quoted,  632,  637 
11  Fitzboodle's  Confessions,"  quoted, 

491 

"  Fors  Clavigera,"1  quoted,  668,  687 
Forster,  J. ,  quoted,    185,   209,    225, 

227,  232,  623.  625,  641 
Franklin,  quoted,  79 
"French      Revolution,"      Carlyle's, 

quoted.  544.  545,  555,  558,  565',  567 
"  Friendship,"  Emerson  on,  781,  784, 

797 
Friswell,   J.    H. ,   quoted,    140,   644, 

688 


8;o 


INDEX 


"  From    London   to    Land's   End," 

quoted,  167 
Froude,  J.  A.,  quoted,  59,  499,  500, 

542,  550,  553.  563 
Fuller,  M.,  quoted,  713 

GALTON,  A.,  quoted.  512 

Gilder.  R.  W. ,  quoted,  847 

Giles,  H.,  quoted,  213,  218,407,  410, 

414.  415 

Gilfillan,  George,  quoted,  31,  66, 
80.  332.  335-  380.  399,  453.  779,  782. 
787 

Gilman,  N.  P.,  quoted,  197 

"God  and  the  Bible,"  Arnold  on, 
quoted,  516 

Godwin,  P.,  quoted,  463,  466,  469, 
477,  482.  665,  671,  678,  689 

Goethe,  Carlyle's  Essay  on,  quoted, 
537 

Goethe,  quoted,  207,  214,  230,  365 

Goldsmith,  antithesis  of,  234  ;  bib- 
liography on  the  style  of,  205-207 ; 
biographical  outline  of,  199-204  ; 
broad  sympathy  of,  213  ;  cheerful- 
ness of,  224  ;  choice  of  words,  his 
nice.  228 ;  comical  extravagance 
of,  226 ;  concise  diction  of,  228  ; 
delicate  pathos  of,  223  ;  declama- 
tion, his  mock  heroic,  233 ;  dic- 
tion, his  concise,  228 ;  ease,  his 
graceful,  207  ;  epigram  of,  224  ; 
extravagance  of,  226 ;  fidelity  of, 
220  ;  graceful  ease  of,  207  ;  homeli- 
ness of,  210 ;  humanity,  his  love  of, 
213  ;  irony,  his  mild,  217  ;  love  of 
humanity,  his,  213  ;  mild  irony  of, 
217  ;  mock-heroic  declamation  of, 
233  ;  moral  tone,  his  high,  229  ; 
naturalness  of,  210  ;  nice  choice  of 
words,  his,  228  ;  optimism  of,  224  ; 
portraiture,  his  power  of,  220 ; 
pleasantry  of,  217 ;  quoted,  as 
critic,  210,  244,  274,  275 ;  sim- 
plicity of,  210 ;  sympathy,  his 
broad,  213  ;  tone,  his  high  moral, 
229 ;  turn,  his  unexpected,  234  ;  un- 
expected turn  of,  234 ;  wit  of,  226 

"  Good  Manners,"  Swift's  Essay  on, 
quoted,  193 

"  Good-Natured  Man,  The,"  quot- 
ed, 224,  227,  235 

"Goodness,"  Bacon's  Essay  on, 
quoted.  9.  13 

"  Gospel  of  Dilettantism,"  Carlyle 
on  the,  quoted,  535 

Gosse,  E.,  quoted,  61,  91,  103,  112, 
116,  126,  156,  180,  183,  193,  197, 
211,  254,  261,  853 

"  Grace  Abounding,"  quoted,  58,  61, 
65.  73,  81 


"  Grande  Chartreuse,  The,"  quoted, 

5i6 

Grant,  C.  F.,  quoted,  273 
"Great  Place,"   Bacon's  Essay  on, 

quoted,  9,  13,  17 
Greek  Literature,  De   Quincey  on, 

quoted,  411 

Green,  J,  R.,  quoted,  75,  91,  102,  106 
Greg,  W.  R.,  quoted,  568 
Grimm,  quoted,  453,  775,  789,  795 
Guardian,  The,  quoted,  113,  128 
"Gulliver's  Travels,"  quoted,  195 

HALE,  E.  E.,  quoted,  843 
Hallam,  quoted,  12,  38,  57,  75,  102 
Hallam's  "  Constitutional  History," 

Macaulay  on,  quoted,  448 
"  Hall  of  Fantasy,  The,"  quoted,  756 
Hamilton,  James,  quoted,  58,  72,  77 
Hannay,  J.,  quoted,  179,  194 
"  Hard  Times,"  quoted,  647 
Harper's  Magazine,  quoted,  416 
Harrison,  Frederic,  quoted,  487,  588, 

600,  618 
Hastings,    Macaulay 's     Essay     on, 

quoted,  441,  483 
Hatfield,  J.  T.,  quoted,  810 
Haweis,    H.   R.,    quoted,   706,   711, 

810.  819,  821,  826,  829,  855 
Hawthorne,  J. ,  quoted,  713,  745,  750, 

779.  793 

Hawthorne, N.,  bibliography  on  style 
of,  732-734  ;  biographical  outline 
of,  725-732  ;  clearness  of,  759  ;  deli- 
cate sensibility  of,  755  ;  descrip- 
tion, his  vivid,  757 ;  fatalism  of, 
747  ;  fidelity  of,  757 ;  high  moral 
tone  of,  765  ;  humor,  his  sly,  749  ; 
idealism  of,  762 ;  imaginative  pow- 
er of,  744  ;  insight,  his  profound 
moral,-  739  ;  melancholy  of,  751  ; 
moral  tone,  his  high,  765  ;  moral 
insight  of,  739 ;  morbidness  of, 
751  ;  mysticism  of,  734  ;  natural 
simplicity  of,  759  ;  picturesqueness 
°f.  757 1  profound  moral  insight 
°f,  739  I  quietism  of,  747;  quoted, 
as  critic,  738,754;  romanticism  of, 
762  ;  self-reflection  of,  764  ;  sen- 
sibility of,  755  ;  simplicity  of,  759; 
sly  humor  of,  749  ;  semi-fatalism 
°'«  747 1  tone,  his  high  moral, 
76; ;  vivid  description  of,  757 ; 
weirdness  of,  734 

Hazeltine,  quoted,  739 

Hazlitt,  William,  quoted,  7,  9, 10.  14, 
18,90,  C7,  106,  in,  113,  120,  123, 
130,  138,  165,  178,  183,  209,  248, 
252,  257,  258,  262,  266,  267,  272, 
274, -278,  280,  332,  334,  336,  339, 
342,  343 


INDEX 


87I 


"  Heart  of  Midlothian.The,"  quoted, 

385,  388 
Heine,  Arnold's  Essay  on,   quoted, 

523 

Henley,  W.  E. ,  quoted,  467,  469, 
479,  481,  534,  556,  589,  598,  614, 
636,  644 

"Henry  Esmond,"  quoted,  487 

"Heroes  and  Hero-worship," 
quoted,  536.  539,  541,  562 

"  Heroism,''    Emerson    on,  786,  791 

Higginson,  T.  W.,  quoted,  742,  758, 
760,  776 

Hill,  D.  J.,  quoted,  705,  715 

Hillard,  G.  S.,  quoted,  735 

History,  Carlyle's  Essay  on,  quoted, 
567 

''  History."  Emerson  on,  780,  790 

"  History  of  England,"  Macaulay's, 
quoted,  427,  428,  432,  435,  443, 
445,  447.  448,  449,  452 

Hodgson,  S.  H.,  quoted,  417 

"  Hoggarty  Diamond,  The  Great," 
quoted,  477 

Holmes,  badinage,  his  graceful,  846  ; 
bibliography  on  the  style  of,  838  ; 
biographical  outline  of,  837  ;  buoy- 
ancy of,  840  ;  colloquial  habit  of, 
842  ;  earnestness  of,  859  ;  epigram 
of,  854  ;  exuberant  wit  of,  849 ; 
familiarity  of,  842  ;  fanciful  humor 
of,  850;  fancy,  his  sportive,  855; 
graceful  badinage  of,  846  ;  grace- 
ful philosophy  of,  862 ;  habit,  his 
colloquial,  842  ;  honesty  of,  857  ; 
humor,  his  fanciful,  850  ;  ingenious 
speculation  of,  862 ;  localism  of, 
860  ;  manliness  of,  857 ;  optimism 
of,  840  ;  pathos  of,  852 ;  philoso- 
phy, his  graceful,  862  ;  piquant 
satire  of,  846 ;  point  of,  854 ;  pur- 
pose, his  serious,  859 ;  paradox, 
his  whimsical,  854 ;  quoted  as 
critic,  541,  760,  791,  738,  810.  818, 
859 ;  revelation  of  himself,  842  ; 
satire,  his  piquant,  846  ;  sectional- 
ism of,  860  ;  self-revelation  of,  842  ; 
serious  purpose  of,  859 ;  simple 
treatment  of  weighty  themes,  844  ; 
sincerity  of,  847 ;  speculation,  his 
ingenious,  862  ;  sportive  fancy  of, 
855 ;  unconventionality  of,  844  ; 
weighty  themes,  his  treatment  of, 
844  ;  whimsical  paradox  of,  854  ; 
youthfulness  of.  840 

''Holy  War,"  the,  quoted,  70,  71, 
76,  78,  80 

Hood,  E.  P. ,  quoted,  546 

Hood,  T.,  quoted,  337 

Home,  J.  XV.,  quoted,  795 


Home,  R.  H.,  quoted,  615,  618,621, 

622,  625,  630,  639 
Hornebrooke,  F.  B. ,  quoted,  496 
"  House     of     the     Seven      Gables, 

The,"   quoted,  739,  749,  751,  759 
H owells.  W.  D. .  quoted,  488,  843 
Howitt,  W.,  quoted,  368 
Hunt,  Leigh,  quoted,  227,  229,  247, 

265,335,  34L  419 

Hunt,  T.  W. ,  quoted,  102,  115,  179, 
186,  193,  274,  276,  280,  334,  340, 

346,  397.  404.  414,  417,  512-  514, 
517,  520,  787,  796 

Hutton,  R.  H.,  quoted.  364,  377, 
495,  496,  498,  501,  505,  510,  516, 
517,  518,  523,  539,  564,  596,  762, 
766,  736.  740,  745,  747,  750,  753 

"  IDEA  of  a  University,  The,"  New- 
man on,  quoted,  505 

Idler,  The,  quoted,  263,  267 

"Impeachment  of  Hastings," 
Burke's,  quoted,  294 

"  Imperfect  Sympathies,"  Lamb  on, 
quoted,  347 

"  Intelligence  Office,  The,"  quoted, 

749,  755,  759 
"  Invisible  World,   The,"    Newman 

on,  quoted,  504 
"  Irish  Journey,"  Carlyle's,  quoted, 

535.  567 

Irving,  Edward,  Carlyle  on  his 
death,  quoted,  569 

Irving,  W. ,  bibliography  on  his 
style,  698;  biographical  outline  of, 
693  ;  contemplation  of,  712  ;  deep 
pathos  of,  708  ;  dreaminess  of,  700  ; 
ease  of,  702  ;  elegance  of,  717  ;  fin- 
ish of,  717  ;  fondness  for  tradition, 
his,  720  ;  grace  of,  702  ;  humor,  his 
spontaneous,  704 ;  kindly  satire  of, 
710 ;  melancholy,  his  mild,  712 ; 
mild  melancholy  of,  712  ;  mildness 
of,  700  ;  pathos,  his  deep,  708  ;  pic- 
turesqueness  of,  714  ;  quiet  grace 
of,  702  ;  quoted  as  critic,  211.  215, 
218,  222,  223,  225,  229,  230.  376  ; 
romanticism  of,  720 ;  satire,  his 
kindly,  710;  serenity  of,  700; 
smoothness  of,  717  ;  spontaneous 
humor  of,  704  ;  sympathy  of,  708  ; 
tenderness  of,  708 ;  tradition,  his 
fondness  for,  720 

"  Italian  Notes,"  Hawthorne's, 
quoted,  748 

"  Ivanhoe,"  quoted,  367,  370,  375, 
378,  381,  385,  388,  390 

JACOBS,  J.,  quoted,  513,  521 
James,   H.,    quoted,   737,   742,    745, 


8/2 


INDEX 


750,  758.  761.  763,  778,  785,  810. 
812,  815,  819,  821.  826,  834 

"Janet's  Repentance,'' quoted,  581, 
592,  ooj 

Jeaffreson,  J.  C. ,  quoted,  462,  479, 
489 

Jeffrey,  F.,  quoted,  181,  184,  188, 
191.  194,  196,  374.  377,  385,  617, 
630,  638,  719 

"Joan  of  Arc,"  De  Quincey  on, 
quoted,  412,  419 

Johnson,  abstract  nouns,  his  per- 
sonification of,  281 ;  antithesis  of, 
247  ;  balance  of,  247  ;  biographical 
outline  of,  236-241  ;  bibliography 
on  style  of,  241-244 ;  brusque- 
ness  of,  273  ;  conservatism  of,  267  ; 
despondency  of,  263  ;  diction,  his 
Latinized,  244;  didacticism  of,  249; 
gravity  of,  258  ;  harshness  of,  273  ; 
heaviness  of,  258  ;  humor  of.  279  ; 
independence  of,  253  ;  intolerance 
of,  267  ;  kindness  of,  275  ;  Latin- 
ized diction  of,  274 ;  melancholy 
of,  263  ;  nouns,  his  personification 
of  abstract,  281 ;  personification, 
his,  of  abstract  nouns,  281  ;  philos- 
ophizing, his  fondness  for,  249 ; 
piety  of,  253  ;  point  of,  247  ;  pomp 
of,  258  ;  prejudice  of,  267  ;  quoted, 
as  critic,  43,  47,  91,  97,  100,  104, 
106,  179,  188,  208,  209,  228,  244, 
258,  264  ;  religious  superstition  of, 
277  ;  sincerity  of,  253  ;  sturdy  con- 
servatism of,  267 ;  sympathy  of, 
275  ;  triteness  of,  279 

Journal,  Lowell's,  quoted,  8n,  827, 
834 

"  Journal  of  the  Plague,"  quoted, 
!53.  159.  164,  166 

Judas  Iscariot,  De  Quincey's  Essay 
on,  quoted,  400 

KEBBBL,   T.    E.,  quoted,  452.  541, 

S5i,  561,  567 

"  Kenilworth,1'  quoted,  381,  389 
Kennedy,  W.   S.,   quoted,  847,  853, 

861,  863 
"  Kingdoms  and  Estates,"  Bacon's 

Essay  on,  quoted,  16 
Kingsley,  Charles,  quoted,  137 
"  Knickerbocker    History    of    New 

York,"  quoted,  707,  708,  711 
Knowles,  S. ,  quoted,  234 

LAMB,  acumen  (critical)  of,  350 ; 
antique,  his  fondness  for  the,  331  ; 
amiable  humor  of,  340 ;  biograph- 
ical outline  of,  323-328  ;  bibliog- 
raphy of,  328-331 ;  companion- 


ability  of,  337  ;  critical  acumen  of, 
350 ;  delicate  fancy  of,  347 ; 
discursiveness  of,  352 ;  ease, 
his  graceful,  337;  egoism,  his  un- 
selfish, 345  ;  epigram  of,  343  ; 
fancy,  his  delicate,  347  ;  fondness 
for  the  antique,  his,  331  ;  graceful 
ease  of,  337  ;  humanity,  his  sym- 
pathy with,  334 ;  humor,  his  ami- 
able, 340  ;  melancholy  of,  350 ; 
paronomasia  of,  343  ;  quaintness 
of,  331  ;  quoted  as  critic,  153,  155, 
331,  332.  334,  346;  sympathy  of. 
with  humanity,  334;  tenderness  of, 
334 ;  unselfish  egoism  of,  345  ;  wit 
of,  343 

Lancaster,  H.  H. ,  quoted,  461,  466, 
470.  474,  478,   481,  483,  485,  488, 
491,  658,  676,  685 
Landon,  L.  E. ,  quoted,  372,  388 
Landor,  W.  S.,  quoted,  630 
''  Lane,"  Bacon's  Essay  on,  quoted, 
Lane-Poole,  S.,  quoted,  184,  188 
Lang,  A.,  quoted,  57,  123,   125,   129, 

i3l.  J37,  140,  469,  618 
Langford,  P.,  quoted,  78 
"  Lapse  of  Time,  The,"  quoted,  496 
"  Last    Words   on    America,"  Arn- 
old's, quoted,  520 
Lathrop,  G.  P.,  quoted,  742,  746,  749, 

756,  849 

Lecky,  quoted,  189,  192,  194 
Letter  of  Milton,  quoted,  46 
"  Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,'' 

Newman's,  quoted,  501 
"Letter   to   a   Young  Lady,"  etc., 

Swift's,  quoted,  186,  192 
"  Letter   to   a  Young  Clergyman," 

Swift's,  quoted,  180 
"  Letter  to  Mr.  Pope,"  Swift's,  quot- 
ed, 198 
11  Letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol," 

Burke's,  quoted,  314 
"  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,"  Burke's, 

quoted,  299,  304,  319,  321 
"  Letter  to  Sir  Charles  Bingham," 

Burke's,  quoted,  317 
Letters  of  Johnson,  quoted,  277,  280 
Letters,  Lamb's,  quoted,  350 
Lewes,  G.  H. ,  quoted,  630,  638 
"  Life  of  Butler,'1  Johnson's,  quoted, 

263 
"  Life  of  Pope,"  Johnson's,  quoted, 

257 

'' Life  of  Savage,"  Johnson's,  quot- 
ed, 247 

"Life  of  Dryden,"  Johnson's,  quot- 
ed, 250 

"  Life  of  Blackmore,'1  Johnson's, 
quoted.,  252 


INDEX 


8/3 


"  Life  of  Fenton,  Johnson's,  quoted, 

253 

"  Literary  Influence  of  Academies," 
Arnold  on,  quoted,  511 

Literary  World,  quoted,  840 

"  Literature  and  Life,"  quoted,  491 

''Literature  and  Life,1'  Newman  on, 
quoted,  495 

''  Little  Britain,"  quoted,  704,  707 

"  Locust  Plagues,"  Newman  on, 
quoted,  502 

Lodge,  H.  C.,  quoted,  861 

Longfellow,  quoted.  760 

Lord.  J.,  quoted,  578,  599 

"Loss  and  Gain,"  Newman  on, 
quoted,  502 

"  Love,"  Emerson  on,  784,  788 

"  Love  and  Sorrow,"  Steele  on, 
quoted,  131 

11  Lovel,  the  Widower,"  quoted,  472, 
488 

Low,  Sidney,  quoted,  813,  Pi6,  821, 
828 

Lowell,  allusiveness  of,  808  ;  appre- 
ciation of  nature  by,  817;  bibliog- 
raphy on  the  style  of,  806 ;  bio- 
graphical outline  of,  800;  brilliant 
satire  of,  823  ;  colloquial  ease  of, 
834  ;  culture  of,  808  ;  deep  pathos 
of,  831 ;  didacticism  of,  827  ;  ease, 
his  colloquial,  834;  exuberant  im- 
agery of,  832  ;  faith  in  human  nat- 
ure, his,  829 ;  high  moral  purpose 
of,  820 ;  homeliness  of,  835  ;  hu- 
man nature,  his  faith  in,  829;  hu- 
mor of,  823  ;  imagery,  his  exuber- 
ant, 832;  independence  of,  812; 
manliness  of,  812  ;  moral  purpose, 
his  high,  820 ;  nationalism  of,  814  ; 
nature,  his  appreciation  of,  817  ; 
pathos,  his  deep,  831  ;  philanthro- 
py of,  829  ;  purpose,  his  high  mor- 
al, 820;  quoted  as  critic,  31,  38, 
40,  42,  48,  190,  460,  465,  469,  538, 
542,  554.  556,  560.  563-  fii6,  708, 
776,  778,  783.  789.  795-  812,  814, 
841,  849,  851,  862  ;  rare  pathos  of, 
831  ;  religious  instinct  of,  820  ;  sa- 
tire, his  brilliant,  823  ;  sectionalism 
of,  814  ;  vigor  of,  812  ;  wit  of,  821 

Lyall,  W.,  quoted,  99 

"Lycidas,"  Johnson's  Criticism  on, 
275 

MACAULAY,  assurance  of,  453  ;  bal- 
ance of,  425  ;  bias  of,  450 ;  bib- 
liography on  style  of,  422-425; 
biographical  outline  of,  420-422  ; 
character,  his  delineation  of,  446  ; 
clearness  of,  441  ;  climax,  his 


oratorical,  439  ;  commonplace  of, 
447 ;  contrast,  his  fondness  for, 
•  425  ;  delineation  of  character,  his, 
446 ;  derision,  his  open,  443 ; 
egotism  01,  453  ;  eloquence  of, 
439 ;  epigram,  his  fondness  for, 
425  ;  erudition  of,  429  ;  effect,  his 
sacrifice  of  fact  to,  435  ;  fact,  his 
sacrifice  of,  to  effect,  435  ;  fond- 
ness of,  for  contrast,  425  ;  form, 
his  sacrifice  ol  fact  to,  435  ;  harsh 
invective  of,  433 ;  imagery,  his 
splendor  of,  443  ;  invective,  his 
harsh,  433 ;  narrative,  power  of, 
438  ;  open  derision,  his,  433  ;  ora- 
torical climax,  his,  439;  ornamenta- 
tion, his,  443  ;  panoramic  view,  his, 
438  ;  partiality  of,  450  ;  patriotism 
of,  439  ;  personal  portraiture,  hi? 
power  of,  446 ;  point,  his,  425  ; 
power  of  personal  portraiture,  his, 
446 ;  prejudice  of,  450 ;  profuse 
repetition  of,  427;  profusion  of,  429; 
quoted,  as  critic,  9, 10, 14,  17, 19,  30, 
33,  60,  64,  68,  77,  78,  89,  93,  94,  96, 
98,99,  103,  107,  114,  180,  208,  210, 

213,  221,  228,  246,  249,  262,  266,  276, 

278  ;   rapidity   of,  429  ;    repetition 

of,  427 ;    sacrifice,    his,  ot  fact  to 

effect,  435  ;  self-confidence  of,  453  ; 

splendor    of    imagery,    his,    443  ; 

view,  his  panoramic,  438 
Machiavelli,    Macaulay's   essay  on, 

quoted,  433 
Mackintosh's  "History,''  Macaulay 

on,  quoted,  450 
"  Mail-Coach,  The  English,"  quoted, 

398,  406,  415,  417 
"  Man  in  Black,  The,"  quoted,  234, 

235 

"  Man  Thinking,"  Emerson  on,  781 
"  Manners,"  Emerson  on,  777 
Manning,  Lamb's  Letter  to,  quoted, 

342,  345 
"Marble  Faun,  The,"  quoted,  738, 

746,  754,  757,  762,  764,  765,  766,  767 
Marshall,  A.  F.,  quoted,  503 
Martineau,  J.,  quoted,  498 
Massey,  G.,  quoted,  341 
Masson,    D.,   quoted,   31,   153,   155, 

157,  181,   185,  193,    197,  252,   265, 

398,   399,  401,   403,  404,  406,  409, 

410,  413,  414,  466.  557,  561,  623,  636 
Mather,  J.  M.,  quoted,  658,  667,  685, 

690 
Mathews,  W.,  quoted,  401,  405,  412, 

414,  419 

Mazzini,  quoted,  539,  548,  559,  563 
McCarthy,  J.,  quoted,  586,  590,  677, 

681 


874 


INDEX 


McElwain,  F.,  quoted,  490 

"  Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier,"  quoted, 
154,  159,  164,  166 

"Men  Not  their  Own  Masters," 
Steele  on,  133 

"  Middlemarch,"  quoted,  579,  602, 
603 

"Mill  on  the  Floss,  The,"  quoted, 
598 

Mill's  Essay  on  "Liberty,"  Macaulay 
on,  quoted,  453 

Milton,  biographical  outline  of,  20- 
26  ;  bibliography  on  style  of,  27- 
30  ;  characteristics  of,  30  -  49  ; 
coarseness  of,  48 ;  conscious  in- 
spiration of,  40 ;  egoism  of,  40  ; 
elevation  (moral)  of,  44 ;  elo- 
quence of,  30 ;  erudition  of,  46  ; 
excessive  imagery  of,  32  ;  gorge- 
ous imagery  of,  32 ;  imagery  of, 
32  ;  incongruity  of,  34  ;  independ- 
ence of,  42  ;  inequality  of,  38  ;  in- 
tense energy  of,  34  ;  intolerance 
of,  42  ;  inspiration  of,  40 ;  isolation 
(mental)  of,  42  ;  inversion  of,  35  ; 
involution  of,  35  ;  learning  of,  46 ; 
magnificence  of,  30  ;  majestic  elo- 
quence of,  30  ;  mental  isolation  of, 
42 ;  moral  elevation  of,  44 ;  pro- 
found learning  of,  46 ;  purity  of, 
44 ;  quoted,  as  critic,  34,  40,  44, 
45,  46  ;  self-respect  of,  40 ;  sub- 
limity of,  30 ;  vituperation  of, 
34  ;  vulgarity  of,  48 

"  Milton,"  Macaulay 's  Essay  on, 
quoted,  427,  429,  438,  441 

"  Milton,"  Lowell  on,  827 

Minto,  quoted,  10,  u,  14,  16.  17,  62, 
89,  92,  128,  131,  132,  152,  154,  158, 
160,  163,  167,  179,  186,  189,  196, 
198,  208,  217,  223,  226,  233,  234, 
245,  248,  249,  251,  262,  2§5,  267, 
272,  275,  280,  281,  397,  399,  400, 
402,  405,  406,  408,  411,  412,  414, 
534,  535.  544,  566 

Mitchell,  D.  G. ,  quoted.  706,  710 

Mitford,  J.,  quoted,  196,  198 

Mitford,  Mary  Russell,  quoted,  46, 
540,  663,  665 

Mitford's  "  History  of  Greece,"  Ma- 
caulay on,  quoted,  438 

''  Modern  Painters,"  quoted,  661, 
662,  664,  675,  691 

Montgomery,  quoted,  120 

"  Moosehead  Journal,1'  Lowell's, 
quoted,  811,  835,  836. 

Morley,  Henry,  quoted,  553,  561 

Morley,  John,  quoted,  453,  774,  779, 
785.  791,  796 

'•  Mosses    from    an    Old     Manse," 


quoted,  744,  746,  748,  755,  761,  764, 
765,  766 
''  Mr.   GilfiTs  Love  Story,1'  quoted, 

5M 

"  Murder  as  a  Fine  Art,"  quoted, 
404,  413,  414 

*'  My  Garden  Acquaintance,"  quot- 
ed, 819,  820,  830 

"  Mysteries  in  Religion,"  Newman 
on,  quoted,  504,  505 

''Mystery  of  Life,"  quoted,  666, 
675 

•'NABOB   of  Arcot's   Debts,    The," 

quoted,  301,  302,  304,  318 
"  Nature,"  Emerson  on,  788,  795 
Negri,  G. ,  quoted,  601 
"  Newcomes,  The,"  quoted,  464,  470, 

472,  476,  480,  481,  486,  487,  491 
Newman,  bibliography  on  the  style 

of,    494-495 ;    biography   of,    492- 

494  ;  erudition  of,  500 ;   finish  of, 

495  ;  human  life,  his  insight  into, 
497  ;  humor,  his  quiet,  502 ;  ideal- 
ism, his  intense,  503  ;  imagination, 
his  vivid,  501  ;  insight  into  human 
life,  his,  497 ;  intense  idealism  of, 
503  ;  keen  irony  of,  505  ;  life,  his 
insight  into,  497 ;  mysterious,  his 
sense  of  the,  504 ;  penetration  of, 
497  ;  quiet  humor  of,  502  ;  satire 
of,  505 ;    self-revelation    of,   496 ; 
sense  of  the  mysterious,  his,  504 ; 
subtlety  of,  498  ;  urbanity  of,  495  ; 
vivid  imagination  of,  501. 

Nichol,    J.,    quoted,    740,    778,    791 

"Nicholas  Nickleby,"  quoted,  620, 
642,  646 

Nicoll,  H.  J.,  quoted,  8,  13,  17,  31, 
43,  46,  47,  94,  157,  163,  182,  185, 
209,  219,  229,  231,  256,  260,  266, 
271,  348,  405,  466,  481,  495,  510, 
522.  582 

"  Nobility,"  Bacon's  Essay  on, 
quoted,  10,  17,  18 

"Novum  Organum,"  quoted,  19 

"OLD Curiosity  Shop.The,"  quoted, 
616,  619,  624,  627,  631,  634,  635, 

639,  647 
"  Old  Margate  Hoy,  The,     quoted, 

349.  350 

"  Old  Mortality,"  quoted,  367 

Oliphant,    Mrs.,    quoted,    107,  336, 

338,   346,  349,  371,   377,  412,  461, 

466,  478,  483,   519,  534,   55i,  554, 

558,  561,  564.  578,   586,  592,  616, 

619,  622,  629,   644,  661,  667,  670, 

673 
O'Hagan,  Lord,  quoted,  500 


INDEX 


875 


"  On  a  Certain  Condescension  in 
Foreigners,"  quoted,  814,  817, 
822,  823,  824,  832 

"  Over  the  Teacups,"  quoted,  852 
"Oversoul,  The,"  Emerson  on,  790, 

791,  795 
"Oxford  in  Vacation,"  quoted,  333, 

334 

"  PACOLET,"  Steele  on,  142 

Pagan  Religious  Sentiment,  Arnold 

on,  quoted,  523 
Page,  B.  A.,  quoted,  418 
Palmer,  R.,  quoted.  841,  847,  855,  860 
"  Parents,"      Bacon's      Essay     on, 

quoted,  9 
"Parochial    Sermons,"   Newman's, 

quoted,  499 
"  Past  and    Present,"  quoted,   540, 

547,  5SL  552,  559,  566 
Pater,    W.,    quoted,    333,    335,  341, 

348 

Patmore,  C.x  quoted,  334 
Pattison,  Mark,  quoted,  30,  35 
Paul,  C.  K. ,  quoted,  583,  597 
Peabody,  A.  P.,  quoted,  765 
"  Peace,    Ruskin  on,'1  quoted,  683, 

686 
"Penal  Laws,"  Burke  on  the,  quoted, 

3°9 

"  Pendennis,"  quoted,  468,  482 
Perry,  T.  S.,  quoted,  382 
"  Pharisee   and  the  Publican,  The," 

quoted.  73,  78,  Si 
Philip,  Robert,  quoted,  66 
"Pilgrim's  Progress,"  quoted,  59,  62, 

65,  66,  67,  71,  73,  74,  76,  78,  80 
"  Pirate,  The."  quoted,  385 
Pitt,  W.,  quoted,  371 
Pitt,  Macaulay's  Essay  on,   quoted, 

429 

"  Plea  of  Merit,"  the,  quoted,  186 
Poe,  quoted,  745,  760 
"  Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  The," 

quoted,  850 

"  Poetry,"  Newman  on,  quoted,  500 
"  Policy  of  the  Allies,  The,"  quoted, 

301 

"  Politics,"  Emerson  on,  798 
"  Pope,"  Lowell  on,  829,  834,  835 
Pope,  quoted,  89,  96,  112 
"  Poverty,"  Ruskin  on,  quoted,  689, 
"  Prasterita,"  quoted,  692 
Preceptor,   The,   quoted,  249 
Prescott,  W.   H.,   quoted,   365,   370, 

374,  377,  379,  384,  387 
"  Present   Blessings,''   Newman  on, 

quoted,  497 
"  Present  Discontents,  Thoughts  on 

the,"  quoted,  322 


"  Present   Time,  The,"  Carlyle  on, 

quoted,  541 
"  Private  Judgment,"   Newman  on, 

quoted,  498,  499,  500 
Procter,    B.    W.,    quoted,    331,   335, 

341,  346,  371,  378,  388,  568 
"  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table, 

The,"  quoted,  842,   846,   851,  854, 

855,  856,  857.  859,  862 
Protestantism,  De  Quincey  on,  quot- 
ed, 417 

"Prudence,"  Emerson  on,  777,  799 
"Public  Spirit  of  the  Whigs,  The," 

quoted,  196 

Punch,  quoted,  475,  826 
Punshon,  M.,  quoted,  56.  59 
Putnam,    G.    P.,    quoted,    701,    708, 

710,  716 

"  QUACK  ADVERTISEMENTS," 

Steele  on,  quoted,  130 
Quarterly  Review,  quoted,  603 

"  RACKS  of  Men,  The  Five,"  quoted, 

342 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  quoted,  17 
Kumbler,  The,  quoted,  247,  258,  263, 

275,  279,  281 
"  Rasselas,"  quoted,  247,   253,   267, 

278 
"  Rebecca    and    Rowena,''    quoted, 

489 
"  Recollections,"  Steele  on,  quoted, 

131 

"Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in 
France,"  quoted,  298, 299,  304,  309, 
311,  312,  316,  318,  321,  322 

''  Reformation  in  England,"  quoted, 

32.  33-  34,  4°.  49 
''Regicide    Peace,    Letters  on   a," 

quoted,  294,  301,  304,  321,  322 
''Reply    to     Salmasius,1'    Milton's, 

quoted,  35,  41,  42,  46,  47,  48 
Retiring,    Macaulay's    Speech    on. 

quoted,  449 
Richardson,  C.  F.,  quoted,  701,  707, 

722.   743,  758,  778,  785.   793.  812, 

816,  825,  828,  832,  843,  845,  860 
Ritchie,  A.  R. ,  quoted,  661,  678,  681, 

688 

Robertson,  E.  S.,  quoted,  580 
Robertson,  J.  M. .quoted,  348,  351, 

510,  661,  665,  667,  670,   674,  t>8i, 

683,  689 
''  Robinson    Crusoe,"    quoted,    154, 

162 
11  Rob  Roy,1'  quoted,  373,  379,  386, 

387.  390 
"  Romola,"   quoted,   579,    587,  597, 

598,  604,  605 


8;6 


INDEX 


Rossetti,  W.  M.,  quoted,  31 

"  Rural  Funerals."  quoted,  709 

"  Rural  Life  in   England,"  quoted, 

702 

Ruskin,  acumen,  his  critical,  689 ; 
aim,  his  moral,  682  ;  arrogance  of, 
672  ;  biblical  coloring  of,  684  ;  bib- 
liography on  style  of,  656 ;  bio- 
graphical outline  of,  6-j8 ;  biting 
satire  of,  667  ;  coloring,  his  bibli- 
cal, 684;  conceit  of,  672;  contradic- 
tion, self-,  of,  680;  critical  acumen 
of,  684  ;  descriptive  power  of,  658  ; 
desire  for  social  reform,  his,  687  ; 
diction,  his  splendor  of,  662  ;  di- 
dacticism of,  682;  dogmatism  of, 
672  ;  eloquence  of,  664  ;  extrava- 
gance of,  669  ;  fierce  invective  of, 
667  ;  impetuous  eloquent  e  of,  664  ; 
inconsistency  of,  680;  interpreta- 
tion, his  power  of,  675  ;  invective, 
his  fierce,  667  ;  keen  sensibility  of, 
675  ;  lack  of  sanity  of,  669  ;  mag- 
nificence of,  662  ;  moral  aim  of, 
682  ;  philanthropy  of,  687  ;  power, 
his  descriptive,  658  ;  quoted  as 
critic,  6c6 ;  reform,  his  desire  for 
social.  687  ;  sanity,  his  lack  of,  669 ; 
satire,  biting,  of,  667  ;  self-contra- 
diction of,  680 ;  sensibility,  his 
keen,  675 ;  social  reform,  his  de- 
sire for,  687  ;  spirituality  of,  684  ; 
splendor  of  diction  of,  662 

SAINTE-BBUVB,  quoted,  364,  384 
Saintsbury,   quoted,  7,   10,   43,  400, 

403,  409,  417,  542,  545,  550,  554, 

589,  618,  628,  643,   646,  660,  662, 

669.  673,  680,  682 
''Salmagundi.''    quoted,    712,    714, 

717,  719,  720 
"  Sanity  of  True  Genius,"  quoted, 

351 
"Sartor    Resartus"    quoted,    544, 

547,  555.  558 
"  Scarlet  Letter,  The,"  quoted,  747, 

748 
•'  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,"  quoted, 

599.6oi 

Scherer,  E.,  quoted,  30,  34,  43,  47, 
534.  54°,  552,  566.  576,  583,  592, 
595 

"Scholar  Gipsy,  The,"  quoted, 
Si8 

"Scotch  Reviewers,'1  quoted,  669 

Scott,  anachronism  of,  381  ;  anima- 
tion of,  373 ;  antiquarianism,  his 
false,  381  ;  biography  of.  353-361  ; 
bibliography  on  style  of,  361-364  ; 
description,  his  realistic,  367  ;  de- 


tail, his  excessive,  379 ;  difFuseness 
°f>  379  I  dramatic  power  of,  388  ; 
effect,  his  scenic,  370  ;  excessive 
detail  of,  379  ;  false  antiquarianism 
of,  381  ;  high  moral  tone  of,  387  ; 
humor,  his  kindly,  376 ;  imagina- 
tive power  of,  367  ;  kindly  humor. 
376 ;  moral  tone,  his  high,  387  ; 
patriotism  of,  365 ;  personal  por- 
traiture of,  364  ;  picturesqueness 
of,  370 ;  quiet  humor  of,  376 ; 
quoted  as  critic,  65,  75,  80,  155, 
158,  193,  209,  215,  230,  367  ;  real- 
istic description  of,  367  ;  reverence 
of,  387  ;  scenic  effect  of,  370  ;  sus- 
tained vigor  of,  373  ;  sympathy  of, 
376  ;  toleration  of,  376 ;  vivacity 
of,  373  ;  vividness  of,  364 

"  Scott,"  Carlyle's  Essay  on,  quoted, 
567 

Scudder,  H.  E..  quoted,  523 

"Seditions  and  Troubles,"  Bacon's 
essay  on,  quoted,  16 

"  J*elf-Reliance,"  Emerson  on,  786 

Senior,  \V.  W. ,  quoted,  462,  491 

"  Sermons,"  Newman's,  quoted,  498, 
500,  503,  504 

"  Sesame  and  Lilies,"  quoted,  666, 
668,  671,  672,  688 

"  Shabby-Genteel  Story,  A,"  quot- 
ed, 484 

Shairp,  Principal,  quoted,  495,  496, 
497.  503.  504,  552,  568 

Shaw,  T.  B.,  quoted,  36,  187,  274, 
337,  350,  368 

"  She  Stoops  to  Conquer, "  quoted, 
210 

"  Shortest  Way  with  Dissenters," 
The,  quoted,  156,  161 

''  Silas  Marner,"  quoted,  593 

Sime,  David,  quoted,  69,  75,  79 

"Sir  Roger  and  the  Gypsies,"  quot- 
ed, 113 

11  Sir  Roger  at  the  Theatre,"  quoted, 
105 

"  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  Papers," 
quoted,  137 

Skelton,  ].,  quoted,  475 

"Sketch    Book,"   quoted,  702,  704, 

723 

"Sketches,  Thackeray's,  in  Lon- 
don," quoted.  490 

Smith,  Alexander,  quoted,  7,  18,  621 
Smith,  C.  C.,  quoted,  416 
Smith.  Goldwin,  quoted,  381 
Smith,  G.  B.,  quoted,   462,  465,  474, 
478,  483,  584,   59',    596,   600,  736, 
830,  831 

"  Snobs,  Observations  on,"  quoted, 
464,  469 


INDEX 


877 


"Snow  Image,  The,"  quoted,  761, 

763,  766 
"Some    Free    Thoughts,'1    Swift's, 

quoted,  190 
"  South  Sea  House,  The,1'  quoted, 

Southey's  Colloquies,  Macaulay  on, 

quoted,  435,  452 
Southey,  quoted,  57,  64 
Spectator^  the,   quoted,   92,   95,    101, 

104,  105,  109,  no,  113,  116,  137,  616 
"  Spenser,''  Lowell  on,  quoted,  814, 

829 

"Spiritual  Laws,"  Emerson  on,  798 
Stanley,    Dean,  A.   P.,    quoted,   72, 

387.  637 

Stead,  W.  T.,  quoted,  822,  830 
Stedman,   E.   C.,  quoted,   519,  739, 

74i,  748,  753,  755,  774,  779,  783. 
788,  793,  794,  796,  810,  813,  816, 
818,  820,  823,  829,  833,  835,  841, 
846,  851,  853.  855,  856,  858,  860, 
862 

Steele,  aim,  his  high  moral,  139  ; 
biography  of,  117-118  ;  bibliog- 
raphy on,  118-119 :  colloquial 
ease  of,  119  ;  companionability  of. 
119;  ease,  his  colloquial,  119; 
exaggeration,  his  grave,  141 ;  good 
sense  of,  132 ;  high  moral  aim  of, 
139 ;  humanity  of,  125 ;  intense 
pathos,  130  ;  intentional  exaggera- 
tion of,  141 ;  judgment,  his  sound, 
132 ;  kindly  satire  of,  128  ;  minute- 
ness of,  122 ;  moral  aim,  139 ; 
pathos,  his  intense,  130 ;  portrait- 
ure, his  power  of,  135  ;  quoted  as 
critic,  89,  103,  130,  132  ;  realism  of, 
122 ;  reverence,  his,  for  woman- 
hood, 133  ;  satire,  his  kindly,  128  ; 
sense,  his  good,  132  ;  spontaneity, 
his,  137;  sound  judgment  of,  132; 
sympathy,  his,  125 ;  vivacity  of, 
137 ;  womanhood,  his  reverence 
for,  133 

Stephen,  Leslie,  quoted,  108,  152, 
156, 161, 165, 193,  196,  216,  220,  246, 
248,  250,  251,  254,  256,  258,  259, 
265,  270,  273,  276,  278,  280,  281, 
373.  380,  397,  403,  404.  406,  410, 
415,  577.  579,  585:  588,  591,  597, 
614,  615,  683,  762,  737,  748,  750, 
756 

Sterling,  John,  quoted,  41,  46,  534, 
538,  549,  554,  559 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  quoted,  374,  384 

Stillman,  W.  J.,  quoted,  663,  683 

Stoddard,  R.  H.,  quoted,  478,  626, 
634,  639,  809,  831,  836 

"Storm, The, "by  Defoe,  quoted,  167 


Story,  W.  W.,  quoted,  826,  831,  836 
''Stout    Gentleman,  The,"   quoted, 

703 

"  Stratford-on-Avon,"  quoted,  704 

"Sublime  and  Beautiful.  The," 
Burke,  quoted  on,  308 

"  Sweetness  and  Light,"  Arnold  on, 
quoted,  514 

Swift,  biographical  outline  of,  168- 
176  ;  bibliography  on,  177-178  ; 
boldness  of,  186  ;  caustic  satire  of. 
179  ;  coarseness  of,  195  ;  directness 
of,  182  ;  ferocious  sarcasm  of,  179  ; 
homeliness  of,  186 ;  quoted  as  crit- 
ic, 94,  186  ;  impatience,  his,  of  ab- 
surdity, 179  ;  insolence  of,  190 ; 
intensity  of,  185 ;  invective,  his 
vehement,  190 ;  ludicrous  combi- 
nation, his  power  of,  193  ;  misan- 
thropy of,  197  ;  plainness  of,  186  ; 
sarcasm  of,  179  ;  simplicity  of,  186  ; 
sincerity  of,  182  ;  terseness  of,  182  ; 
vehement  invective  of,  190;  wit 

of,  193 

Swinburne,  A.  C. ,  quoted,  338,  522 
Symonds,    J.  A.,   quoted,  739,  750, 

758,  761 
System  of  the  Heavens,  De  Quincey 

on,  quoted,  418 

TAINK,  quoted,  9,  12,  31,  33,  45,  57, 
58,  59,  64,  89,  95,  97,  101,  in,  115, 
J53>  I55>  I58,  161,  182,  185,  187, 
190,  192,  211,  231,  248,  252,  256, 
258,  260,  266,  273,  331,  337,  371, 
376,  380,  382,  481,  536,  553,  568, 
626 

"Tale  of  a  Tub,  The,"  quoted,  195, 
198 

"  Tales  of  a  Traveller,"  quoted,  710 

Talfourd,  T.  N.,  quoted,  217,  331, 
334,  338,  341,  368 

"  Talisman,  The,"  quoted,  372,  373, 
388 

Talleyrand,  quoted,  186 

Tatler,  The,  quoted,  122,  125,  127, 
128,  130,  133,  135,  136,  138,  139, 
140,  141,  142 

"Taxation  No  Tyranny,"  quoted, 
272 

Taylor,  B.,  quoted,  474,  813,  856 

Thackeray,  quoted,  207,  213,  215, 
217,  271,  463,  467,  470,  471,  475, 
476,  477*  481,  484,  617 

Thackeray,  alleged  injustice  of,  to 
womanhood,  490  ;  appellations, 
significant  of,  489  ;  artistic  ease  of, 
468  ;  burlesque,  his  skill  in,  487  ; 
characterization,  his  natural,  465  ; 
comment,  his  familiar,  471  ;  didac- 


8;8 


INDEX 


ticism  of,  480 ;  ease,  artistic,  of, 
468 ;  exact  portraiture  of,  465 ; 
force,  his  skill  in,  487 ;  familiar 
comment  of,  471  ;  finish  of,  468 ; 
fondness,  his,  for  moralizing,  480; 
grace  of,  468 ;  hatred  of  shams, 
his,  460  ;  humor,  his  kindly,  482  ; 
quoted,  90,  92,  ico,  121,  124,  126, 
134,  138,  190,  192,  195 ;  hypercriti- 
cism  of,  460  ;  injustice  to  woman- 
hood, his  alleged,  490 ;  intense 
realism  of,  477;  keen,  merciless 
satire  of,  460 ;  kindly  humor  of, 
482  ;  manliness  of,  473  ;  merciless 
satire  of,  460  ;  minute  observation 
°f,  477  I  moralizing,  his  fondness 
for,  480 ;  natural  characterization 
of,  465 ;  observation,  his  minute, 
477  ;  pathos,  simple,  of,  465  ;  por- 
traiture, exact,  of,  465  ;  ^realism, 
his  intense,  477  ;  satire,  his  merci- 
less, 460  ;  self-suggestion  of,  471  ; 
shams,  his  hatred  of,  460 ;  signifi- 
cant appellations  of,  489 ;  simple 
pathos  of,  485 ;  sincerity  of,  473  ; 
skill  in  burlesque,  his,  487 ;  sym- 
pathy of,  473  ;  tenderness  of,  485  ; 
womanhood,  his  alleged  injustice 
to,  490 
"The  Angel  of  the  Sea,"  quoted, 

679,  684,  687 

"  The    Complete    English   Trades- 
man," quoted,  161,  164 
"  The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth, "  quot- 
ed, 624,  642 

"  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,"  quot- 
ed, 682 

The  Examiner,  quoted,  182,  184 
The  False  Alarm,  quoted,  249,  273 
"The    Mutability    of    Literature," 

quoted,  713 
"The  Genteel   Style  in  Writing," 

quoted,  352 

"The  Roots  of  Honor,"  quoted,  688 
Thoreau,  H.    D.,   quoted,  533,  536, 
540,  544,  546.  550 
Thoreau,"  Lowell  on,  827 
''  Thoughts   on   Various    Subjects," 

Swift's,  quoted,  181 
Tickell,  quoted,  96 
"Time  and  Tide,"  quoted,  675 
Times,  The  London,  quoted,  810 
'•  Timmins's,  A  Little   Dinner    at,'1 

quoted,  490 

Traill,  H.  D.,  quoted,  823 
11  Traveler,  The,"  quoted,  229 
"Tristom  and  Iseult,'1  quoted,  523 
Trollope,  A.,  quoted,  461,  467,  471, 
485,  488,  638,  641,   766,   744,   749, 
753 


'"Truth,"  ftacon's  Essay  on,  quoted, 

9,  19 
Tuckerman,  Bayard,  quoted,  70,  77, 

209,  214,  221,  223,  232,  382 
Tuckerman,   H.  T.,  quoted,  90,  96, 

99,  122,  125,  129,  134,  140,  154, 
158,  166,  184,  192,  195,  469,  486, 
701,  706,  708,  714,  760,  763,  718, 
720,  722,  738,  740,  745,  748,  750, 
753,  756,  758 

Tulloch,  John,  quoted,  69,  75,  461 
"Twice-Told  Tales,"   quoted,    739, 

749.  757 

"Two  Old  Ladies,'1  Steele  on,  quot- 
ed, 124 

UNDERWOOD,  F.  H.,  quoted,  706, 
715,  7i8,  737,  776,  785,  786,  812, 
819,  822,  823,  825,  831,  833,  834, 
845,  847,  853,  854,  858,  861 

Utilitarian  Theory,  The,  Macaulay, 
on,  quoted,  454 

"  VAIN  GLORY,"  Bacon's  Essay  on, 

quoted,  15 
"Vanity   Fair,"   quoted,    468,   471, 

473,  480,  490 

Van  Dyke,  H.,  quoted,  45,  61,  63 
Vaughan,  R.  A.,  quoted,  485 
"Vegetation,  Of  Truth  of,"  quoted. 

680 

Venables,  E.,  quoted,  57,  58,  81 
"  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  The,"  quoted, 

210,  212,     213,    2l6,    219,    22O,     222, 

224,  226,  233,  235 

"Virginians,  The,"  quoted,  484,  491 
"  Vision  of  Theodore,  The,"  quoted, 

279 
"Voyage  to  the  Houyhnhmns,  A," 

quoted,  198 
Voltaire,  quoted,  90,  112 

WALDSTKIN,  CHARLES,  quoted,  660 

Wallace,  H.  B.,  quoted,  703,  715, 
722 

"  Walton,1'  Lowell  on,  820 

War,  De  Quincey's  Essay  on,  quot- 
ed, 398,  418 

War  of  Succession,  Macaulay  on, 
quoted,  427 

Ward,  A.  W.,  quoted,  614,  626,  629, 
638,  641,  643 

Ward,  T.  H.,  quoted,  189 

Warner,  C.  D.,  quoted,  700,  702, 
705,  711,  712,  716,  717,  721 

Watt,  J.  C.,  quoted,  473,  483,  485, 
625 

"  Waverley."  quoted,  375,  376,  378 

Welsh,  A.  H.,  quoted,   248,  249,  268 


INDEX 


879 


"  Westminster  Abbey,"  Irving  on, 
quoted,  713,  717,  720 

Westminster  Review,  quoted,  486 

Westminster  Review,  George  Eliot 
in,  quoted,  590 

Whately,  quoted,  9 

"What  if  the  Pretender  Should 
Come,''  quoted,  161 

Whipple,  E.  P.,  quoted,  8,  12, 14, 17, 
18,  218.  460,  466,  469,  472,  516,  542, 
546,  577,  582,  585,  588,  605,  614, 
621,  629,  636,  640,  706,  718,  742, 
744.  75°,  753.  758,  760,  764,  775, 
780,  781,  785,  787,  789,  791,  792, 
794.  795.  798,  813,  833,  834,  847. 
849,  851,  856,  858 

''  Whist,  Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on," 
quoted,  339 

White,  R.  G.,  quoted,  615,  619,  630, 

639 
Whittier,  quoted,  58,   845,  846,  849, 

853 

"  Widow  and  Her  Son,  The,"  quot- 
ed, 709 

"  Wife,  Dead,  The,"  Steele,  quoted, 
132 


Wilde,  Lady,  quoted,  578 
Wilkinson,  W.  C.,  quoted,  577,  604, 

826 
Wilson,   Walter,   quoted,    160,    161, 

163,  165 

Winchester,  C.  T.,  quoted,  822 
Windsor,  A.  C.,  quoted,  33 
Winter,  W.,  quoted,  855 
''Witchcraft,"  Lowell  on,  811,   827, 

836 
Woodberry,  G.  E.,  quoted,  61,  68,  71, 

812,  816,  818 
Woodbury,    C.     R.,    quoted,     793, 

798 
"  Woodstock,"  quoted,  366,  369,  380, 

387,  389 
"Wordsworth,  Lamb's    Letter  to," 

quoted,  345 
"  Worldliness   and    Other-Worldli- 

ness,"  quoted,  590 

"  YELLOWPLUSH,      Memoirs     of," 

464 

Yonge,  C.  D.,  quoted,  383 
"  Youth,"  Bacon's  Essay  on,  quoted, 

9 


A     000  161  680     4 


Hi;l  III 


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